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Machine Shop I
Drilling, Taping and Turning
Drilling, Taping and Turning were the topics covered on the Machine Shop I short course I took. It consisted of a 30 hour semester with an old (but really powerful) set of Machine Tools on the University of Puerto Rico CUTB campus.
I first bought a small bench drill at Harbor Freight Tools. It was a nightmare, because it was too small and drilling was not an user friendly task. If I would have bought the beauty shown above (a Craftsman 17" Bench Press drill) life would have certainly been easier. The spindle and the chuck are vibration free and the cut measures are only within a few mils (10 to 20 mils usually) depending on the bits used. I use Craftsman and High Speed Steel bits. to cut through wood, fiberglass and aluminum.
The tap and die set is from Craftsman also. It has worked fine and only the small handle broke after hundreds of taping procedures. I bet that a cheap tap and die set would have broken much faster. The 8-32 tap still works although with a little of work. Considering that all of my R2D2 screws are 8-32 and that I must have used this tap well over a thousand times, I consider the Craftsman tap and die set to have done great! This set cost about $100.00 but will perform a lot better than those costing around $60.00.
The lathe, I bought from Harbor Freight Tools. It is a small and cheap lathe. It will work nice with fiberglass and depending on the part, with aluminum. I advise everyone not to buy this lathe (neither buy a Central Machinery tool!). Try to save a few bucks and buy a tri-phase lathe. Sometimes they can be bought used at cheap prices but with still many hours of use! Local machine shops may have a few "obsolete" units at discount prices.
My dream? I will someday have a huge 14X40 lathe. After I have my own hand driven machine shop, then I could decide to buy some CNC machines, but to my Machine Shopping is fun! I can not let a computer do the job for me! And I doubt my hobbies require a .0001 of an inch precision!
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