One tool/machine to level up a moderate shop

[scottandme]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

One tool I thought I wouldn't need much but I ended up getting for Team 11 was a tapping head.

At some point we had this idea to drill *lots* of holes into aluminum and tap them instead of using rivets.

We have Haas CNC lathe and mill but the rigid tapping feature is over $1,000 after it times out. Not to mention the tap holders and hardened taps.

You can still get tapping heads and at that, tapping heads for CNC machines.
So I grabbed a couple of old Tapmatic NC. We still need to make an interlock plate for the face of the Haas spindle but once we do we can tap in the Haas mill with it and it even works with the 10 tool changer. Then if something happens to the Haas mill we can tap in the manual mills with the same tapping head. If we have no milling machines there's always a drill press with the same tapping head (you put the interlock bar against the post of the drill press). All the interlock does is hold the body of the tapping head from spinning.

So since this tool can easily be gotten for cheap and can be gotten to work on a drill press. If someone envisioned lots of tapping (say for tool plates or Erector set parts or something like that) it might be handy to have around.

No idea what a tapping head is, watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtYzhlKFbjA

I would check out the procunier tapping heads (same as in the linked video) - they're expensive new ($500-700) but are pretty easy to find on ebay for ~$100-200. Make sure it includes the collets, since those run ~$20-30 each.

The 1E model covers #0 to 1/4" taps, and the 2E covers #8 to 1/2" (in aluminum). You can find them with 1/2" straight shanks or morse taper shanks. I used the 1E model, it struggled a bit with 1/4" taps but the clutch was probably adjusted a bit too low. I would probably try a pick up a 2E since we didn't use it for anything smaller than a #8.

The CNC part is probably not relevant to the OP, but as an aside, pretty much any CNC mill should be able to tap threads using a "floating" tap holder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5lrphpqUCY
http://www.maritool.com/Tool-Holders...duct_info.html

One of the main benefits of rigid tapping is that you can put taps in any normal "rigid" toolholder (ER commonly), so you do end up saving some money that way.