[NLRS] 4-40 tap

[Phil Lefever]

At 03:26 PM 2/11/2007, W0ZQ at aol.com wrote:


>Anyone know of a good source for a 4-40 drill  and tap ?   I suppose Hub
>Hobby ?   I looked at DigiKey and  did not see a listing for taps.

Jon,

You have got lots of good advice so far. Donn's advice for
going to a _good_ hardware store is the easiest. (Note that
the Home Depot, Lowes and Menards aren't good hardware stores!).
The ones I mean are the old school independent ones usually
affiliated with either ACE or Hardware Hank. The HH I used
to work at carried 4-40 taps.

I read one suggestion for a spiral flute tap which I will
say is handy for a blind hole as it brings the chips up out
of the hole. The bad thing about spiral flute tap is that
they are easier to break then straight flute designs, we
go out of our way to not use them...

If the hole you are tapping is a through hole (or there is a
bit of room at the bottom) I'd HIGHLY suggest a spiral POINT
tap if you can find one. These push the chip out ahead of the
tap and the tap never needs to be reversed to break the chip.
You can actually just put the tap into a variable speed drill
and just run it through the material (at a far faster speed
then you'd imagine!). Any lubricant will get the job done,
this is actually about the only place WD-40 actually works
as a lubricant ;)

If you haven't found a tap/drill yet, or have trouble finding
one, shoot me a message. I have a lot of stock at the machine
shop I manage and I could drop a care package by if need be.

73!

PL

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Phil Lefever    KBØNES                          Twin Cities Repeater Club
kb0nes at tcrc.org                                 Burnsville,MN