jjudge
Member
Anyone else practicing with the taps/die?
Post some observations, lessons learned on this please.
...
Richard Kleinhenz and I are chatting. It makes sense to post it here.
Summary of our email thread
The taps/die we ordered appear to be aimed at cutting metal.
That is, they have a positive rake - where plastic (ductile materials) should have a neutral or slightly negative rake.
This issue is similar to drills/drill bits.
See www.google.com/books title = "Metal Cutting Theory and Practice" and search for positive rake, ductile, etc.
Richard said:
- aluminum (6061) threaded and looked OK.
- water + soap helps lubricate
- e-taps can make 0-rake taps/die on request ("for plastic or soft aluminum"
- taps seem more forgiving
- suggest not to try brittle materials (e.g., inlace acrylester I'd planned to try)
- Metal / Mokume worked well
- in plastic, back-off and clear/break chips often (e.g., after every 1/3 turn)
- Epoxy cuts OK (e.g., cat blank from ed4copies)
I suggested corian (glues up well, is hard, should thread OK).
Notice Richard is working hard, and I only had 1 suggestion
-- joe
Post some observations, lessons learned on this please.
...
Richard Kleinhenz and I are chatting. It makes sense to post it here.
Summary of our email thread
The taps/die we ordered appear to be aimed at cutting metal.
That is, they have a positive rake - where plastic (ductile materials) should have a neutral or slightly negative rake.
This issue is similar to drills/drill bits.
See www.google.com/books title = "Metal Cutting Theory and Practice" and search for positive rake, ductile, etc.
Richard said:
- aluminum (6061) threaded and looked OK.
- water + soap helps lubricate
- e-taps can make 0-rake taps/die on request ("for plastic or soft aluminum"
- taps seem more forgiving
- suggest not to try brittle materials (e.g., inlace acrylester I'd planned to try)
- Metal / Mokume worked well
- in plastic, back-off and clear/break chips often (e.g., after every 1/3 turn)
- Epoxy cuts OK (e.g., cat blank from ed4copies)
I suggested corian (glues up well, is hard, should thread OK).
Notice Richard is working hard, and I only had 1 suggestion
-- joe