Or, in other words, use your drill press as a lathe.

Posted at 11:35 am on Feb 26th, 2010 by gs88

Not many machinists at hackaday then?

Posted at 11:39 am on Feb 26th, 2010 by Alan

Anybody who wants to learn more stuff like this should download/buy from Lindsay a copy of Advanced Machine Work, it’s full of old school machinist tricks they don’t teach anymore.

Posted at 11:43 am on Feb 26th, 2010 by Josh

A nice creative alternative to having a lathe. If you have a rotary table and a decent drill press you can do other “lathe” type operations as well.

Posted at 11:51 am on Feb 26th, 2010 by Scott

The process should work fine if the process is reversed, ie clamp the piece to be drilled in the chuck and transfer it to the vice. The drill bit can thus be used in the the standard way.

Posted at 12:06 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by Phil

@Phil
The chuck can hold delicate pieces in a much more stable manner than the vice, and with more contact points.
Holding a delicate piece (that is being hollowed out by the drill bit) with the vice will inevitably lead to distortion.

Posted at 12:24 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by octel

Nice idea, just one day to late for me…. -_-

Posted at 12:29 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by Michiel

hahaha curse anime indeed

Posted at 1:03 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by Link

Why do noob things get posted as “hacks”? It’s not clever, it’s not innovative, it’s something that anyone that has worked with metal for any length of time has already known. Machinists have done this for the past 60,000 years.

Honestly, get the Advanced Machine Work book, it’s a non electronics hackers bible.

http://www.archive.org/details/textbookofadvanc00smituoft

Posted at 1:07 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by fartface

I can drill centered holes in bolts using my eyeballs and a decent drill press or vertical mill. It’s not difficult.

Posted at 1:14 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by bigalexe

This is a good post. Everybody is a noob at something. I drilled a lot of holes, but probably not a single straight one.

Posted at 1:57 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by svofski

@fartface

Once upon a time, you did not know about this. You probably had someone introduce you to the Advanced Machine Work book too. And for posting such noob things, I thank you. Because now I also know. Or should I have already known about that too?

Posted at 2:12 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by el tejon

Good reminder. I have not needed to do that but maybe one day will…

Posted at 2:16 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by Circuitmage

@fartface

And now I have it. Seriously, thank you for the link.

Posted at 2:16 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by el tejon

Yep, machining is not new to me but the Machinist Book reference is… Thank you for the link.

Posted at 2:42 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by Scott

I have a couple criticism of the article:

First, hand sharpened drill bits do not drill straight. They chatter. The holes they make will be out of round and off center. Sharpening the flutes symmetrically and with proper angles requires specializes jigs or highly configurable grinders like the beauty recently featured on Hack A Day. I’m not suggesting throwing out your bits, but keep one set of properly sharpened bits for jobs like this.

Second, even a bit that is sharp and true will tend to wander than starting a hole. Machinists who need accuracy start their holes with either spotting drills or center drills. TFA’s approach might work most of the time, but if you want to get it right every time, put the work piece in the vice and use the correct tools.

I’ve become something of an evangelist for hobby size machine tools. A table top lathe makes this chore a breeze (tighten stock in 3-jaw chuck, drill), and opens up a world of possibilities. I waited until well into my 40′s to get some really cool tools, and regret not starting out 30 years earlier.

Posted at 3:02 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by Ken

@fartface

Count me among the rest for thanks. There’s a lot of stuff in there that’ll finally make sense of things.

Posted at 3:08 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by ClutchDude

On the physics comment, while true the chuck has its place, it becomes much more center because it is the object instead of the bit in the drill. The centripetal motion forces any objects to it’s center. This phenomena can be broken, but it’s something a craftsman (relative to this case; a person with a lathe or a ceramicist using a wheel) takes into consideration while working.

Centering the chuck can be done wrong as well, but its more obvious then if the position of the bit lodged between the clamp was off.

Posted at 3:26 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by blizzarddemon

Drills don’t drill round holes btw. For small parts make a fixture to hold them in the vice (soft jaws, collet etc.) and center drill, drill then ream.

Posted at 3:55 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by IM

Spinning the work instead of the tool is a great technique for a lot of projects. It’s how people drill gun barrels, for instance, since the drill is self-centering when used this way so it’ll run right down the middle of the stock. It is also a good technique if you need to put a centered point on the end of a rod: chuck it in the drill and spin it against a bench grinder. You’ll get a nice sharp well-centered point. Ditto putting a centered cup on a nailset, if you have a small-diameter grinding wheel on your Dremel.
This is the reason lathes are the most versatile tool.

Posted at 7:00 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by smellsofbikes

“If you’ve ever been caught in the situation of needing to drill a clean straight hole down the center of a bolt”
Yep, when making home made gun :)

Posted at 7:13 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by therian

By the way, in case anyone reading this needs to drill deep holes, by which I mean more than 10x as deep as they are wide, here are a couple of suggestions. Rotate the work, not the drill, as we’ve already said. Amazon.com will sell you really long thin drills, like 1/8″ drills 12 inches long, but I’ve found they don’t really work well because the flutes make the drill squirm and cut poorly. Use aircraft drills, that have long unfluted shanks with only a short fluted section at the very end. Peck: drill in maybe twice the diameter of the drill, then pull it all the way out to empty the chips. And if you can manage it, double-drill using one drill about 1/8″ or so smaller than the final size, and the second drill the final size, drilling an inch in with the smaller drill then following up with the larger, alternating as you drill through. (Similar to cutting a long thin rod on a lathe.)

Posted at 7:55 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by smellsofbikes

@smellsofbikes: This is what ‘gun drills’ are for. Never really seen what the actually look like, but from what I gather there is only one flute and the end of the bit is nearly flat.

Posted at 8:33 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by medix

Correction: I do know what they look like. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_drill

Posted at 8:35 pm on Feb 26th, 2010 by medix

good post and even better comments. thanks hAd and thanks guys.

Posted at 1:14 am on Feb 27th, 2010 by cath0de

I work for a company that makes office screens http://www.ecomfg.com/
And have spent some time working in all the departments of the factory (including metalwork). The way I’ve always done centred drill holes is to take the piece of metal (in my case it was with flat bar 25mm/2mm) and measure halfway across the flat bar (12.5mm) and ‘centre punch’ (I don’t know if that’s the real name but that’s what we called it in the factory) and punch a start dent on the metal then we would use a premade jig and clamp it all together in a vice. Once in the vice we place under a pillar drill and drill the hole! It sounds quite long winded but it worked every time!

Posted at 1:35 am on Feb 27th, 2010 by Robert

For anyone who’s interested in other oddities of machining, check out the ‘Watts Drill’ – this is an age-old hack all to its own for drilling square holes. ;)

http://upper.us.edu/faculty/smith/reuleaux.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuleaux_triangle

Posted at 8:29 am on Feb 27th, 2010 by medix

Jesus what’s with those twats who go “Oh everybody that has years of experience or read one specific book knows this, this is boring”
Guess what’s REALLY boring? You idiots and your pratty comments, you types have been ‘helping’ for thousands of years too, and it’s enough already thanks.
And they forbid parents smacking kids…

Posted at 12:40 pm on Feb 27th, 2010 by Whatnot

Not a bad trick if ever you were considering making sound supressors/silencers for weapons. They need precision drilling. Lathe is a better alternative though.

Posted at 5:20 am on Feb 28th, 2010 by lulz

I second that a lathe would be the best way to do something like this, but when you’re short on time, a lathe, or both, this would be the way to go. As someone who isn’t a machinist by trade or any standard for that matter, this is a hack.

Posted at 8:55 pm on Feb 28th, 2010 by The Ideanator

if you use the right feeds and speeds you dont need these little “tricks” you can drill a 3/16 inch hole through 12 inches of steel with the right feeds and speeds.

what do you do when you have a bigger, or irregular work piece?

Use a center drill first, then drill your hole. works every time.

Posted at 12:21 pm on Mar 1st, 2010 by ktm

Also note, this trick only works if the piece being drilled is smaller than the feed depth the drill press is capable of, otherwise, you have to move the drill but/vise to get the work in the chuck and it will not return to the same location.

But it is a good alternative if you do not have a small lathe available. Even when using this method, I’d think about starting off with a center drill bit. They are cheap and very handy.

Posted at 12:55 pm on Mar 1st, 2010 by komradebob