Center drilling the ends of bent pipe

S

sjlather

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I am new and just joined to see if this is possible. I have a grizzly mini lathe. I need to center drill holes in the end of a bent pipe. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to chuck the piece so that I can get a centered hole on each end. The pieces are similar to this:

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Any ideas? Thank you very much and I am looking forward to reading and learning here.
 
I think that may best be done on a V-block with your favorite drill press or mill. Terminology varies, but I gather you want to drill through holes somewhere along the straight sections, not along the bend, right? Either way, I don't think a lathe has a part to play.
 
If all I had was the lathe to work with, two things I can think of that might possibly work depending on the size of the piece and swing of the lathe are:

1- Hold the piece using a face plate with possibly a V block or some other method to hold the piece on the face plate. Center drill in the tailstock.
2- Mount the center drill in the spindle holding it in a collet or chuck and mount the work piece on the carriage some how. You could possibly remove the tool holder and mount it on the compound some way or remove the compound from the carriage and mount the work piece directly to the carriage some how.

Ted
 
sjlather said:
Sorry, I need to drill the holes in the ends of each tube.
Click to expand...

Okay, bear with me- I think of tubing as hollow and has no "end" to "center drill". Do you want to drill perpendicular to the centerline of the tubing, such to perforate the tubing through the axis? Because if I really wanted a hole in a piece of exhaust pipe, I'd seriously use a hand drill and a machinist's square, or better yet a center finder. If the pipe were engineering material, I'd use a V-block, and a drill press or mill. If there were many holes specified at a given cross-section that needed to be very precise, I'd use a dividing head or rotary indexer. It's awfully hard to fix a work piece like that in a lathe for drilling, and I'm just spitballing ideas based on what I understand of your question. Maybe one spitball will stick.
 
Question. Is it pipe or solid round stock?
Vee block on a faceplate for me also if it’s solid and you are centre drilling the end.
Cheers
Martin
 
sjlather said:
Sorry, I need to drill the holes in the ends of each tube.
Click to expand...

If you have lots of hole to drill it might be worth making some sort of guide / fixture to hold the tubes.

As others said either use a drill press/mill or if you only have a lathe, mount using a Vee tailstock insert or on the cross slide of lath maybe held in the tool post if it is large enough.


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Stu
 
Small holes 3/16 or less I would just hand-hold them either on a drill press or on the workbench with my trusty Makita drill
with gloves on
 
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