Drilling holes can be quite time consuming work, particularly if you have to drill a lot of them. Think about all the hassle of grabbing a part, fixturing it in the drill press, lining it up, double checking, and then finally making the hole. That takes some time, and that’s no good if you’ve got lots of parts to drill. There’s an easy way around that, though. Build yourself a rad jig like [izzy swan] did.
The first jig we get to see is simple. It has a wooden platter, which hosts a fixture for a plastic enclosure to slot perfectly into place. Also on the platter is a regular old power drill. The platter also has a crank handle which, when pulled, pivots the platter, runs the power drill, and forces it through the enclosure in the exact right spot. It’s makes drilling a hole in the enclosure a repeatable operation that takes just a couple of seconds. The jig gets it right every time.
The video gets better from there, though. We get to see even niftier jigs that feature multiple drills, all doing their thing in concert with just one pull of a lever. [izzy] then shows us how these jigs are built from the ground up. It’s compelling stuff.
If you’re doing any sort of DIY manufacturing in real numbers, you’ve probably had to drill a lot of holes before. Jig making skills could really help you if that’s the case. Video after the break.
For me it looks like the hole is a bit crooked at 6:37. The drill is not lined up straight? Maybe classical xample how you can make lots of damage with little effort.
For the single hole, drill press isn’t that bad idea..
Any individual drilled hole happens quickly so it doesn’t look like he’s drilling into a block, it looks more like he’s making a hole in the side of a box. Probably slight differences in angle don’t matter for that. (But your point is well taken.)
I was taken by the layout of his workshop.
For my workshop I have a rule “all tools must be visible”, so that any time you need a tool you can just reach out and grab it.
In his workshop, note that all the measurement tools are well laid out and completely visible. Everything has a place, and the human will quickly learn the location of any tool by it’s position.
I assume the drawers behind him are similarly laid out for easy access to other tools. Imagine searching through a loose drawer of hex wrenches to see what I mean.
(And the project is pretty neat, and has given me some ideas about future projects.)
As a followup to my previous comment, I just now looked over the angle grinder kit (product) mentioned in the video. My grinder discs are stored randomly on a shoe-box and… spending $70 on a complete selection with drawers looks like a good deal.
Take the value of your time (dollars per hour), consider how much time it takes to sort through a shoebox of discs to find the one you need, times the number of times you have to do that, probably doesn’t come to $70.
But add the time needed to go to the store and pick up a disc type I don’t have, and that one trip easily swamps the $70 value.
And he mentioned that having all types of disc lets him experiment with new techniques. Grabbing just the right disc once is probably worth the $70 value.
On the minus side, you need space in your shop for the disc selection, most of which you won’t use most of the time. If you don’t have a lot of space, it might not be worth it.
That’s another reason I like about Hackaday – it introduces me to new tools and techniques to try.
For those angle grinder disks: Make something so they’re standing vertical, just like books in a book case. That way you always have an overview of which disks are where.
And then returning home only to find that you indeed had one in the shoebox, but it was stuck between a couple others shaped the same and you just didn’t see it…
that’s point i make to my wife about her dental office. her strategy is using every cubic foot. my strategy is keep all cabinets below and above reach empty. don’t cram cabinets full, esp. mixed sizes and equipment so stuff gets pushed to the back and forgotten. put stuff on shelves depending on how often and where used (if necessary
from a bulk staging area). Group similar stuff together so you know how much you got and when to re-order. Don’t jam stuff together, leave space around things for new stock. That’s what I tried to tell her once, but it’s her office, so i stfu and enjoy my no-stress retirement. 🤷😋
Grinding discs fit inside CD cake boxes.
I like this. Food for more thought.
No servos in sight! Very neat solution, far cheaper, and I’ll bet far faster to build and get working.
Nice bit of jig and tool building. But for those square~ish black parts? I would have put the jig on an angle plate (even a wooden one in this case) and just run them through a drill press.
But that said, looks a lot easier on the shoulder and wrist, than reaching upward to pull a drill press handle. Spent many a day on a mill or drill press or a radial drill doing just that and got the arthritis award to go with it.
Often spent time to set up so that I was pushing the handle away from myself, on the under swing of its arc, when the stroke was short.
As for the three hole rig? Nice! Now you’re getting to some old style specialty production methods/tooling, where it makes sense to do this stuff.
Depending how soft the material is, a chisel point drill can still walk around before the hole is started. Especially when the surface is convex.
For accurate holes you should be using a centre punch first, even on a drill press.
First rule of accurate hole drilling:
Don’t use a normal twist drill to start the hole.
Use a center drill.
Or a punch.
Anything is better than a twisty bit of steel wire.
A twist drill will wander.
The hole will follow the random location the twist drill finally ‘decided’ to bite.
Less accurate than a democrat sniper.
Off by degrees.
This is just a jig to drill three inaccurate holes at once.
That sounds dirty…speaking of which…reamers!
This crit would be just as valid if schmo had been using a drill press or a mill.
Twist drills are great for cutting holes, not so much for starting or finishing holes.
What you wrote is right if you want to build for precision and/or for long life of the product, and the material can take it and keep it (the hole and it’s dimensions).
But this is a plastic box, a 0.05mm variation of hole position it won’t matter.
This is why ww2 was lost by precision and won by numbers.
You’re going to get significantly less accuracy than 0.05mm, closer to 0.2mm. That’s significant in any material.
Looks pretty cool really. I would agree with the twist bit wandering if he was going into steel, but he was going into plastic.
Just curious if you reached out to Izzy for insite for this article? His mind works in some amazing ways, constantly looking for ways to improve work flow.
Unless you need radial holes in a round part, it would be far simpler to just have a lever arm push the slide with the drill on it, rotating the whole thing doesn’t accomplish anything
Seems an odd way of working to me to build an entire drill press to fit a single jig instead of vice versa.
I would like to see a hacks for hacking. E.g. what tools do you have or skip. What tools you skimp on? How is your workshop orchestrated, constructed and generally laid out? Small vs large workshop? Hacking specific workshop things, thoughts, ideas etc.
Why do I want to know? I am moving to a bigger house with spare rooms, ca 3*4m, and I can finally let my ideas come to fruition!