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Jon Elson
Oh, yes, one other thing mentioned that I did recently --
I had some broken off taps in parts I was making, and decided one weekend to see what I could do about that. I threw together a low power EDM system from a large assortment of miscellaneous parts. I made an electrode from a piece of 1/16" brazing rod with one end brazed into a socket head cap screw. I threaded the screw into a big nylon spacer I had, and mounted that in my milling machine's Jacobs chuck. I was able to use the CNC mill's positioning system to move the electrode just where I wanted it. For EDM fluid, I first tried tap water, but that foamed and sputtered away quickly. I then went to alum-tap tapping fluid, which worked fantastically as an EDM fluid. I set up for about 30 V open circuit, and started the mill in the slowest backgear range (80 RPM). With the brazing rod almost perfectly straight, it orbited about .010 - .015", clearing out a bigger hole in the tap than the diameter of the rd, itself. I programmed the CNC to advance the spindle at about .006 to .01" per minute, and used the feed override to keep EDM current between .25 and .5 Amp. I replenished the fluid as needed, and raised the electrode and cleaned out the hole when progress stopped (about every .020"). I got rid of each tap in about 10 to 25 minutes, depending on how much of the tap was left down in the hole. Mostly, after the EDM operation, all that was left of the tap was the very tip of the flutes, and they could be picked out with a fine needle. All the holes were later tapped and the parts used. An earlier attempt to burn the taps out with Nitric Acid was not very successful, and left the aluminum slightly stained, but the EDM did no damage to the workpiece at all. I plan to put all this, including diagrams and photos on my web pages. Jon |
James P Crombie <[email protected]
Looking forward to seeing your web pages on this. I just gor a brochure for a small tap remover from Taiwan but havn't got a
price on it yet. take a look at I worked in a mold shop that had a Camman tap buster, it used molybdenum tubing for the electrode and a milky colored dialectric coolant fluid. I had used it to remove everything from a 2-56 tap to stuck 2" shcs. These things can save a lot of parts and I wouldn't mind making one for myself . Jon Elson wrote: From: Jon Elson <jmelson@...>-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- James P Crombie Summerside PEI Canada My Astronomy stuff RhinoCad 3D Stuff --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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