I hate centre drills..............

I was thinking more along the lines of 'ouchiness' involving **LINK**

A futher benifit of spottin drills...they cut very true,,straight and to size.finish is good too.

Crikey John, you nearly gave me a heart attack! The first one on the list is:

Me too! just broken a BS1, fortunately had enough material to machine away & release broken pilot & start again. Also broke a 4mm tap in a QC tool holder adjusting screw.. didn't realise it was so hard... ended up making another, so had to machine away the collar, left me with a surplus knurled 'bit' for my odds 'n' sods box

George.

Lofty they are not used for drilling lathe ctr holes, they are used to start a drilled hole so you must have a use for them whenever you want to drill something in the lathe? Or use a CSK to finish the edge of a hole.

Also if you were able to fit a ctr drill into your chuck whats to stop you fitting a 3mm or 1/8" spotting drill into the same chuck?

I would say in my workshop that ctr drills now have a limited application eg just drilling for when you want ctr support and the spotters every time I drill a hole in the lathe or use the DRO to set hole positions on the mill. I just have 1/8" and 3/16" ones no real need for the big ones unless using to CSK or de-burr at the time of spotting which start getting a bit more expensive.

My point exactly Jason, no good for a center hole, and to date the simple center drill and follow up drills have always sufficed in the lathe.

I think I said I wanted a 1mm pilot hole, my chuck doesn't close down that far and will not hold a 1mm drill, so the center drill with its larger shank was used - no probems.

I can understand that if running a CNC setup and having to drill a large number of holes to correct size in one go rather than two is far more practical.

Edited By Lofty76 on 14/10/2013 14:12:32