Tech Week.... Drilled, Dropped Axle How to

Nice work Kev. Real Sanitary. We've got those drills at work too. Bad *** units they are.

 

We call those Orange County Chopper bits, a ture quality production item.

 

Watch eBay. I got a functional Jauncy Slugger magdrill for about $300, and another with a missing magnet, a $100 chuck so I can use conventional twist drill bits, and 14 annular cutters up to 2 3/8", paid about $250 for it. so for less than half the price of a new drill, I got a drill, spare motor, jacobs chuck, and hundreds of dollars worth of cutters.

 

I learned to deburr at a very young age. I spent a lot of Saturdays with deburring tools, an oil stone and sand paper making sure that whatever came from the old man's shop was not going to cut snag or tear someone's skin.

I worked in a job shop when I was in my 20s that the boss was a fanatic, he would walk around picking up everyones finished parts and if he found a single burr or a sharp edge that was not supposed to be a sharp edge it was off to the band saw with it. Then the machinist would make another piece on his own time with his own metal to replace the bad part. You could totally screw up a piece and get forgiven but there was just no forgiveness for a part that was not properly deburred.


OK way off base for the topic, sorry about that.

This is way less time consuming than the way we did it when I was a kid.

We used to get the holes close to the size we wanted them. It is very hard to "drill" a round hole at least one of any size. I had a set of hand reams that I bought from a machine shop that was going out of business. It was get th hole pretty close then start reaming. After that we would take a rat tail file to the holes to chamfer them. An axle could take a couple of hard days to get done.

My how technology has changed.

 

I work at a rental store and we rent a mag drill that has a regular chuck. Another rental store down the road rents one that will use the annular bits.
Check your local tool rental stores.

 

I have a superbell axle. How thick is the center sections of those?

 

If you have a cast axle I would not drill it. I did so and decided against using it and went and bought the forged axle for strength and peace of mind.

 

I dont know whether its cast or forged. But they offer them in drilled so i would ***ume its okay to do so?

 

I thought Super Bell stopped selling the cast axles after all the problems they had with them. I wouldn't run a cast axle.

 

Any competent steel shop that does work on any kind of structural steel will have one of these drills. When they first came out years ago, they were terribly expensive but EVERY shop went out and bought one immediately after they saw it used just once. It is a huge time saver and saved the shop owner many man hours of drilling.

You can lay out your work and go to your local steel shop and ask if they willl drill it out for you using their drill. The bits take something like forever to dull so they will probably do it for nothing or a very nominal fee as it won't take them any time at all. Just make sure you have it all layed out and center punch each hole.

Andy

 

Good post. Thanks, Kevin. A lot of good info on this thread from everyone.

 

We had a drill like this when I was in the Elevator Trade. I never thought to use it like this. Thanks for the write up!

 

The bits are expensive compared to ANY other drill bit on the planet, but not so bad when you consider the job they do.

Milwaukee offers a 9 bit set from 7/16"-1 1/16" for $379, so around $42 each for a precision piece. Bonus is, the bits would last the average user a lifetime. Not too bad...

 

The annular cutters are expensive. I got a set of standard sizes when I bought my mag based drill. The largest is 1".
My mag based drill was less than $500 on e-bay, and I have used it for lots of things in the garage.

To get the 1 1/8" cutter I paid $109 for one cutter.

You can extend their life by 1000 % by using proper water soluable cutting- cooling fluid.

 

Dumb question maybe, but can you use these bits in a regular drill press? I'd give the money for them if they would work.

 

Only if your drill press has a 5/8"+ chuck. The sluggers are a big shank and a machined surface. If you have an old swedge style drill press, you can still buy an adapter to accept these bits. Only problem is.... Most modern drill presses run a 750 rpm's or so. If this is the plan, you would have to slow it down to 350 or 400 to keep from burning the bits up.

At 750 rpm's the (very expensive) bits would last about 10 seconds.

Just sayin'....

 

Wait a minute. I thought you was going to drop an axle here? Also are these cast axles people are talking about really dangerous? I thought they were cast out of ductile iron and really they were ok? They aren't like cast iron you can hit with a hammer and break are they?

I have a tapered chuck? is that cool?

 

I bet if people really examined the diameter of the bolt that held their spring to the perch, the cast axle issue wouldn't be as worriesome.

 

I always heard you had a tapered chuck, don't know how COOL it is, but work it brother....

 

a gots to use what ya gots. If you don't tell anyone they may not know and if they notice tell 'em its special.

I suppose after this tech my next drilled axle is going to be a pricey one but the cost will go down with each axle. I got a few good years left so I shouldn't have any trouble recooping the cost.

 

The Haugen bit has a straight 3/4" shank. Will that size fit in your chuck? You can use standard drill bits to drill an axle, just start out with a smaller pilot drill and go up in steps till you get the size you want. Remember in machining anything, the bigger the diameter the slower the rpm. and when in dought slow it down.


Ago

 

Tech Week is almost over now... Thanks to all who approved of mine.

Hopefully it helped in the building process somewhere.

 

When does the voting begin?

 

I thought we were going to drop an axle too

 

Sorry to the guys that picked my tech in the other poll and liked it, somehow we missed the boat...?

Don't know exactly what happened...

 

I use rota-broach cutters, fly cutters, step drills and regular bits at work and in the shop (for fun). Try Bowman QUAD-CUT (part#19483). Stuff is incredible and haven't lost a bit yet. Just one thing, if you get it on the jaws of your drill chuck it won't hold. Got to clean the bits after each usage.
Great teck piece.