bfullmer

Member
Do they make an adjustable boring bar with a straight shank to fit in a drill press ? I am looking to enlarge some holes from 1 7/8 to 2 inch and drill bits and reamers are too expensive for the amount of work I have to do. Parts are not round and won't fit in a lathe or is there a better way to go ?
 
Yes they do, the shank is seperate from the boring head. If your drill press is heavy duty enough to run one it will have a morse taper in the quil. You cant do this in tbe average shop drill press! It MUST be heavy duty, in excellent shape and have power feed. Go to Ebay and look up adjustabe reamer and/or Critchley or Chadwick reamer. The cheap India made copies might be OK for a few holes otherwise make sure your buying the genuine article.
 
It would be unusual to be able to do this with a drill press. If you have access to a lathe could you bolt the piece to a face plate? (depends on how big your part is)
 
(quoted from post at 03:16:38 02/04/17) You might try a metal hole saw if you can clamp the pieces to the drill press table.

That's what I did , a friend suggested a hole saw and I just laughed . I tried one anyway expecting it to be a disaster , I was very surprised and impressed by the result . I enlarged about 12 holes from around a half inch to an inch and an eighth with hardly a chatter or a stall using a big hand held sds drill. The saw looked fit for another fifty holes after that .
I bought the tungsten carbide tipped saw for about $15 Aus . on e bay .
 
There's various boring heads out there, and many can be had in an import version for relatively cheap, but doing them in a drill press isn't going to be easy--there's just too many things lacking on the typical drill press, such as powered, or at a minimum micro-controllable, feed, a way of SOLIDLY clamping your work, and sufficient rigidity of the quill. Could a good machinist do it if they had no better way? Probably. Is it a viable way of doing it for most people? Probably not. Are you going to save money and time and still get a good product when you're done with minimal scrap? Again, very doubtful.
 
That's going to be really hard to do in a drill press no matter how you go about it. Working a hole that size requires the part be held securely, and the tool turned very slowly and held rigidly in the chuck.

A hole saw "might" work. If the existing hole could be plugged with wood, drill a 1/4" hole to guide the hole saw, replace the drill bit with a 1/4" dowel so it would not cut the wood, go very slow with cutting oil, maybe... Hole saws have a reputation for cutting over size.

Can you post a picture of the part or a better description? What kind of material?
 
If you get a GOOD quality hole saw and use it to cut a hole in a steel plate you can clamp that over the piece that you want to cut the larger hole into.Use the hole saw with lots of cutting oil and slow speed. The first piece will guide the hole saw. Betcha that will work, always worked for me.
 
If any thing close to precision is required for that part my experice tells me that you would be as well off to use a die grinder, a carbide burr and your eyeballs as an ordinary hole saw. I don't think some of the responders read that your are removing 1/8"? The way a hole saw will wallow around even with a guide piece you could easily end up 1/4" over. I use hole saws, this ain't no place for one.
 
To do this right you need to clamp or fasten in someway the part to a milling machine table and use an adjustable boring head. If you don't have a boring head or the guy you get to do it doesn't and you don't need real precision you might make a boring bar with a tool bit clamped in it and be able to come close with some fiddling around with it.
 
I second the fly cutter. if post drill press it should hold. just go easy and take a little at a time. and slowly sneak up on the size. about .005 to .010 at a time. it will be slow but should work.
 
We have a Hogan magnetic drill that uses annular cutters, they call it a roto-broach. They will cut pretty accurately sized holes but you still need a ridged machine and set up to use one as suggested. Not sure what your shank options are with them? Hogan's set up proprietary.
 
(quoted from post at 02:49:16 02/04/17) Do they make an adjustable boring bar with a straight shank to fit in a drill press ? I am looking to enlarge some holes from 1 7/8 to 2 inch and drill bits and reamers are too expensive for the amount of work I have to do. Parts are not round and won't fit in a lathe or is there a better way to go ?

Why not plug the hole with wooden peg--tight fit--and then enlarge with proper size hole saw?
 

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