Not everything from China is junk

[ChazzC]

That's very generous of you to offer your time and effort.

I'll have a think about whether I fancy making something functional that absolutely fits my needs or just buy the very well made and pretty thing that's close enough.

Or maybe I'll just buy the cheap knock-off Vevor drill drawer indexes and have done!

Print one: if you don’t have a printer you get to buy more kit!

 

[SouthernChap]

Print one: if you don’t have a printer you get to buy more kit!

I have a little Prusa Mini+. I've had the official Prusa enclosure sat in its box for the last month. Got to assemble that enclosure and move the printer from its annoying cupboard door-blocking IKEA Lack table enclosure in my office to the workshop.

Good CAD practice, true, but that removes the fabrication practice I'd get from making an index (or more accurately, making a bunch of more or less rubbish indexes until I got a result that I was satisfied with! ).

Anyway, I've got to add some oil/grease points on the top of the the 7x headstock (now with added hi/lo gear), finish reassembling said headstock, replace the motor pulley to suit the shorter toothed belt's different teeth and remount the BLDC motor, change gear assembly and control box, and fit the new Hall effect tachometer...and then do all the adjusting necessary, having fettled and modded the lathe.

Then a couple of little lathe projects and then on to setting up the mill properly (been using it as a bench drill press up until now).

Distracting myself with another storage project? That way madness lies!

(and besides, I already have three woodwork-heavy storage projects in the queue ahead of any others!)

 

[ltlvt]

Print one: if you don’t have a printer you get to buy more kit!

I have 2 of the Vevor drill drawers. I compared them to Huot both in function and price before I bought them. Vevor has steel dividers and Huot has plastic trays . i had to tighten the screws that hold the ball bearing drawer slides and put a drop of blue loctite on each screw but was well worth the difference in quality and price. Mounted them under the chip pan of my Clausing 5913 lathe. Taps Drills and lathe bits all right at my finger tips. EZ-PZ

 

[m1kemex]

I have 2 of the Vevor drill drawers. I compared them to Huot both in function and price before I bought them. Vevor has steel dividers and Huot has plastic trays . i had to tighten the screws that hold the ball bearing drawer slides and put a drop of blue loctite on each screw but was well worth the difference in quality and price. Mounted them under the chip pan of my Clausing 5913 lathe. Taps Drills and lathe bits all right at my finger tips. EZ-PZ

I have them on my wish list. Good to know.

 

[ltlvt]

I have them on my wish list. Good to know.

Somewhere i have pictures of the Vevor drill drawers mounted on the lathe. When I find them I will add them to this post. Many of the things I have bought from Vevor is good quality but not all. I bought what is called a "Topside Creeper" Used when working on the engines of cars and truck.s It is a waste of money. It is marketed to be the same as the expensive ones but will not work at all. Here is a picture before I mounted them to the bottom of the chip pan. they are mounted on the far right side allowing the operator plenty of room to work next to the headstock. Also one of them is a 3 drawer with deep dividers and the other one has 5 drawers with less deep dividers and more slots.

 

[RaisedByWolves]

Going by their shipping calculation page, Huot are unaware that there are other countries outside the borders of the US!

Shame, the metric index is very nearly what I need (although it would be nice to have the slots in 0.1 mm increments rather than 0.5).

Eh, I'll just have to "pull my thumb out of my ass" as you guys say and make something. Good excuse to get a small benchtop brake, I guess (although where that's going to live, God Almighty alone knows! )

Make a list and we can rent a ship to work out a relief operation.

We can send you a ship full of tooling and in return you send us a shipment of Parker’s pork pies and street vendor fish and chips.

 

[SouthernChap]

Make a list and we can rent a ship to work out a relief operation.

We can send you a ship full of tooling and in return you send us a shipment of Parker’s pork pies and street vendor fish and chips.

What you guys need most is proper Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate.

(And the eternal thanks from most UK machine tool manufacturers for letting them nick most of the US manufacturers designs).

 

[rwdenney]

My cheapie drills got a lot better when I bought a cheapie import drill sharpening machine. That wasn't really that cheap, but it was cheaper than the German machine it ripped off, and it will put a sharp tip on a drill in 30 seconds.

My beef with a lot of the Chinese drills I've bought isn't that they are too soft, but that they are too brittle. It seems to me they've been overhardened and not properly tempered to improve their toughness. But when I chip an edge, I throw it in the sharpener and it hardly slows me down. Breaking the bit hurts less when it's cheap, and I fill in the hole with drills bought from McM, which are Cle-Line or something similar.

Rick "the sharpener solves problems with drills made with poorly centered points, too" Denney

 

[yota]

the funniest drill thing I've seen was a set of silver & demmings in a wood case I bought years ago at harbor freight. they would not drill. when I looked at them closely, they had pretty much no relief grind. I ended up hand grinding them, and they worked ok though they seem to get dull pretty quickly.

 

[ltlvt]

My cheapie drills got a lot better when I bought a cheapie import drill sharpening machine. That wasn't really that cheap, but it was cheaper than the German machine it ripped off, and it will put a sharp tip on a drill in 30 seconds.

My beef with a lot of the Chinese drills I've bought isn't that they are too soft, but that they are too brittle. It seems to me they've been overhardened and not properly tempered to improve their toughness. But when I chip an edge, I throw it in the sharpener and it hardly slows me down. Breaking the bit hurts less when it's cheap, and I fill in the hole with drills bought from McM, which are Cle-Line or something similar.

Rick "the sharpener solves problems with drills made with poorly centered points, too" Denney

Sounds like you bought one of Vevor's drill grinders. I have heard and seen some really good reviews on them . Just won't turn loose of the money for one.