Copper tools

[BrianP.]

What do people use for copper? Milling, drilling and tapping. We are doing a bunch of copper and I,m just running standard drills and taps. Decent enough with proper speeds and feeds. Really not enough parts to justify carbide at this point. Taps? Broke a few and ordered some OSG coated (made in Mexico). Could not even get through 1 part with them. Went back to standard uncoated taps (GTD).

[htm01]

biggest thing i find is heat, the part will close a hole on the drill, sometimes we have to drill a little bigger tap drill, also on becu we grind one side of the drill a little more than the other

[Tim Johnson]

What type of copper?

[Odell]

H.S.S. tooling works ok on copper. What I do to help reduce heat is to increase my feed and lower my spindle speed. Keep a heavy chip. As far as tapping goes, use a spiral fluted tap. Almost like machining stainless.

[heavychevy2155]

I don't think tools made from copper could last all that long.

[Toxsol]

I don't know, had a copper hide hammer for 10 years and still going strong.

[BrianP.]

quote:

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I don't think tools made from copper could last all that long.

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If I'm cutting balsa wood they would.

[shazam/TPP]

at one time copper tools were state of the art

[Clarence L Cook]

I made some copper ground lugs C110 a few months ago and I had to go with carbide drills. After about 300 holes the 5/16 drill was small by about .007". I would also look at thread milling instead of tapping. Copper seems to want to pinch around the drill.

[jeff]

For tapping in Copper (we just use 110 copper),

I only use form taps from OSG.

We have a tapping arm and I never tap copper in the machine, the tap fluid that I found works the best is a soy-based fluid, I don't know the name/make offhand at the moment,but it works great.

If we run out of that, I use WD-40 which is amazing for tapping aluminum also.

[Hitachi]

I have had sucess using roll taps in OFCH Cu, for milling I always use carbide as HSS would be like stepping back to the stone age

 

Elco1971

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