Broaching? Easy way?

Technical Technical Discussion
1

is there an easy way to broach?

Edit: and cheap

Thanks.

2

Could you be more specific?

what about calling local machine shops/crazy old guys with mills in their garage for free help.

3

The broaching operation requires the use of a broach, which is not cheap. A keyway broach can cost between $20 and $30 while a hexagonal broach ususally costs over $100. So if you are trying to save money you should look at your specific application and determine if a keyway broach would work instead of a hex broach.

Or ask around your general area and find someone who can do broaching. Local teams, perhaps?

4

What sort of resources do you have at your disposal? And what is your definition of “cheap” (it is different for everyone)?

The easiest way to do it yourself is with a single broach and an arbor press. Depending on what size and shape you are attempting to cut, single keyway broaches are available for as cheap as $16.00, and a small 1 ton mechanical arbor press can be found for $32.00. If you are only cutting a few keyways, then some of the inexpensive import tools will probably last long enough to do the job. While $48.00 might be a bit much if I only had to cut one keyway, it is not bad if I wanted to bore out two dozen sprockets ($2 per hole seems like a reasonable investment). If you are going to be running through a gazillion sprockets and plan on doing this for years, you will probably want to look into higher quality (and more expensive) tooling.

There are lots of other methods that may also be applicable. Can you provide some more information? Are you attempting to cut keyways? Turn a round hole into a square or hex hole? Create a D-hole? And in how many pieces? Some of these can be done with simple/cheap tools, others will require more effort (and probably more $$$).

If you just need to broach one or two holes and you can’t do it yourself, you might check with a local machine shop. The cost per hole to have them do it is probably very affordable. And if you tell them what it is for, they may do it for free (and it may open up an offer to let them become one of your sponsors in exchange for some machining services!).

-dave