[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by dlavery

Please, NEVER EVER do this. This is a very unsafe practice. First off, the bearings in the quill of a drill press are not designed for side loads. There is a significant probability you will damage the machine if you do operations like this. But more important, there is a real probability that the hack saw blade will shatter and spray pieces of blade back in your face. Hack saw blades are not designed for repeated shock loads (like they would get when striking the edges of a turning hex shaft). they are brittle and being held under tension. As the blade repeatedly strikes the edges of the turning hex shaft at a relatively high frequency, there is a very good chance the blade will fracture and fail. And in these conditions, the failure can cause the blade to come apart in multiple pieces which may be thrown back at you or across the room at someone else.

If you need to make notches in a hex shaft, please do it safely and properly. If you don't have access to a lathe and need to do it manually, grip the shaft in a vice and cut the notches with a hack saw by hand. Cut the first one, rotate the shaft in the vice, and cut the next one, etc. It won't take that long.

-dave
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Doh. I stand corrected. I guess I've done a little bit too much farmyard / garage engineering in my time