Aluminum Meat Mallet

No, I do not have a boring head. Maybe that is what I call a plunge mill bit? Luckily, I can make the hole bigger and I will if I can correct the slant on the current holes. Thank you for letting me know an end mill will work.
 
A boring head? I had to look that up and watch a few videos to be sure I knew what one was. I am familiar with boring bits and tools for the lathe but have not used one with a mill. But now I know a little bit more than I did. I am guessing I will use an end mill or some type of milling tool to slowly enlarge the 10mm tapped holes that are at a slant, that need to be straightened. I have a few practice blanks that have the slanted 10mm tapped holes. I will try taking them up a size by drilling them out and re-tapping. I am guessing 12mm would be large enough.
 

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tredding said:
A boring head? I had to look that up and watch a few videos to be sure I knew what one was. I am familiar with boring bits and tools for the lathe but have not used one with a mill. But now I know a little bit more than I did. I am guessing I will use an end mill or some type of milling tool to slowly enlarge the 10mm tapped holes that are at a slant, that need to be straightened. I have a few practice blanks that have the slanted 10mm tapped holes. I will try taking them up a size by drilling them out and re-tapping. I am guessing 12mm would be large enough.
Click to expand...
Yup, a boring head is a super useful tool for the mill. It allows one to create holes that are round, on location, and of a desired size. Drill bits will not do any of those things. Reamers can make a hole mostly round and on size, but follow the location of a pilot hole. And a boring head is the way to make large holes. Since the cut can be very small in a given pass, they can achieve a lot on even lighter machines. It's definitely what I would use for your job. I bought a used Criterion on eBay, but inexpensive imports are readily available, and I imagine will work quite well. They may be a little more difficult to get a very precise diameter (e.g., for a bearing fit) but I don't know.

An end mill is at least stiffer than a drill, so will do a better job of straightening the hole; a carbide end mill to a greater extent than one made of HSS.

You could also do it by boring on the lathe in a 4-jaw chuck.
 
jwmelvin said:
I bought a used Criterion on eBay, but inexpensive imports are readily available, and I imagine will work quite well. They may be a little more difficult to get a very precise diameter (e.g., for a bearing fit) but I don't know.
Click to expand...
The China import boring heads should be avoided if you value maintaining low blood pressure. Other fantastic imports exist from Japan, France, Germany, and so on. I couldn't stomach the cost of a proper manual mill version of the Criterion, so I "settled" for a Yuasa, that did not break the bank. It's a hundred times better than the two China specials that I'd been fiddlef*king with. If you can hold .005 with a Chinese boring head, it's because you fozzy welded all the moving parts together. At full slop, I'd be surprised if you can hit .015, and none of that is remotely good enough for a light press-fit bearing. I'm not passing judgement on anyone or their equipment, I'm simply saying to stay well away from cheap boring heads because it's totally futile. Plan to buy a used, midrange boring head from any other part of the globe, and you'll have a much nicer experience.
 
pontiac428 said:
The China import boring heads should be avoided if you value maintaining low blood pressure. Other fantastic imports exist from Japan, France, Germany, and so on. I couldn't stomach the cost of a proper manual mill version of the Criterion, so I "settled" for a Yuasa, that did not break the bank. It's a hundred times better than the two China specials that I'd been fiddlef*king with. If you can hold .005 with a Chinese boring head, it's because you fozzy welded all the moving parts together. At full slop, I'd be surprised if you can hit .015, and none of that is remotely good enough for a light press-fit bearing. I'm not passing judgement on anyone or their equipment, I'm simply saying to stay well away from cheap boring heads because it's totally futile. Plan to buy a used, midrange boring head from any other part of the globe, and you'll have a much nicer experience.
Click to expand...
I second that. I had a junky boring head at one point that came with a pile of tools, and was trying to figure out why people liked them, it seemed unusable. I picked up a second-hand criterion, and figured it out, it is perfect.

ONE thing to note: The boring bar sets that are NOT inserts require a ton of grinding to get the relief angles right. I couldn't figure out at first why my reasonably-expensive set of boring bars were making a mess of the holes. Turns out, they don't have a proper relief ground on them from the factory!

I spent a while trying to fix that, but just gave up and picked up a couple of insert-boring-bars (Basically this set: https://www.amazon.com/Shank-Indexable-Boring-Free-Insert/dp/B011JGF9NG), which work fantastically.
 
jwmelvin said:
Yup, a boring head is a super useful tool for the mill. It allows one to create holes that are round, on location, and of a desired size. Drill bits will not do any of those things. Reamers can make a hole mostly round and on size, but follow the location of a pilot hole. And a boring head is the way to make large holes. Since the cut can be very small in a given pass, they can achieve a lot on even lighter machines. It's definitely what I would use for your job. I bought a used Criterion on eBay, but inexpensive imports are readily available, and I imagine will work quite well. They may be a little more difficult to get a very precise diameter (e.g., for a bearing fit) but I don't know.

An end mill is at least stiffer than a drill, so will do a better job of straightening the hole; a carbide end mill to a greater extent than one made of HSS.

You could also do it by boring on the lathe in a 4-jaw chuck.
Click to expand...
Great advice. Exactly what I needed to hear. Now I am learning how to order the right size. I am literally correcting a threaded hole that is not perpendicular. A larger drill or even a mill would tend to follow the original hole. The boring head should be able to make a larger hole perfectly perpendicular.

The current hole is tapped for 10mm. I am guessing I could bore a 27/64" and tap 12mm and fix the problem. Thank you for the help. Terry - W6LMJ
 
ErichKeane said:
I second that. I had a junky boring head at one point that came with a pile of tools, and was trying to figure out why people liked them, it seemed unusable. I picked up a second-hand criterion, and figured it out, it is perfect.

ONE thing to note: The boring bar sets that are NOT inserts require a ton of grinding to get the relief angles right. I couldn't figure out at first why my reasonably-expensive set of boring bars were making a mess of the holes. Turns out, they don't have a proper relief ground on them from the factory!

I spent a while trying to fix that, but just gave up and picked up a couple of insert-boring-bars (Basically this set: https://www.amazon.com/Shank-Indexable-Boring-Free-Insert/dp/B011JGF9NG), which work fantastically.
Click to expand...
I guess the starting point is to identify a usable boring head. Then one can add the boring bars. Thank you for the suggestion on the bars. I am thinking of a 2" boring head vs a 3" boring head only because my current task is a fairly small hole. I am thinking I want to reach 3/8" in the future. Learning is such fun. Terry - W6LMJ
 
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