Originally Posted by Cory (Post 966871)

It doesn't look like there's any possible way to get enough travel out of that thing to start the broach.

The hydraulic ram arbor presses are terrible for hex broaching, for a number of reasons.

We used one in 2007 and 2008 and always experienced mediocre results.

The ram is not supported in any meaningful manner on most presses (likely to just involve two tubes running inside two other tubes, leading to a lot of slop. With hex broaching the alignment of the broach to the workpiece is absolutely critical and this slop killed any chance of the broach running true.

It's also a huge pain to have to constantly be raising the table and cranking on the jack. They're really the wrong tool for the job. Nobody needs a 6 or 12 ton press for FIRST purposes.

Mechanical presses in the 2-3 ton range can be had for $150-200. We bought a nice Palmgren 5T press a few years ago for $300 something on sale from Enco. It's definitely worth spending a bit more money to get a quality arbor press. It's such a useful tool. We use ours multiple times per day during the build season.

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi (Post 966890)

What hex broaches (brand, price, etc.) would you recommend? 1/2 and 3/8