pic: Off-Season Drive Project

[Aren Siekmeier]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

If you have people with basic lathe skills, the snap ring groove is actually a faster operation than drilling + tapping.

If the shaft was predilled (already had a hole in it), it'd become comparable but I still think the groove is a tad less tedious to machine than tapping once the skillset is obtained.

Also, the tolerances for the groove width and depth are are like +.003/-0.0 and +/-.002 but we've been fine in situations where we've botched that by quite a bit. So it isn't as daunting as that makes it seem. The width tolerance is set by your insert too, so you don't even deal with that.

So there's another point for snap rings and against bolts

Lathe and mill work is relatively new on our team, so we are still figuring out the do's and don't's and can's and cannot's on our machines. Good to hear how it can really be a "snap"