Tapmatic tapping head

I have recently acquired a Tapmatic 30x tapping head, supposedly having had only light usage. I am surprised at the amount of side play in the spindle, somewhere around 20-25 thou. Can someone who has owned a new head tell me if this is normal, to allow the spindle to align itself with the hole? Or is mine more worn than I was led to believe? Thanks.

Andrew

Mine was bought new, by me, some years ago and has definitely had very light use. The spindle is pretty loose, easily 20 thou. It's better if you hold the arm, but still a good few thou. Doesn't seem to affect it, so I assume it's normal.

Andrew

Thanks Andrew. That's reassuring to know. It must be a design feature then.

Andrew

Andrew(s) - Used and had a tapmatic for many years - as new spindle is quite loose as stated and is a design feature - I assume to allow for any slight misalignment of work to head.

I saw recently someone say ing there was no clutch but as far as I'm aware all versions have one that can be variably loaded by screwing the top down.

I have a manual somewhere if that will help

Tug

I have the SPV version. No sideplay though.

Steve.

Significant orbital play on the output side seems to be normal for tapping heads. I've yet to see one of any breed that is even approaching rigid. Certainly my full set of Pollard heads are all somewhat wobbly.

I'd always assumed that they were designed that way to cope with any small misalignment between tap thread and the hole to be tapped. They are, after all, fundamentally drilling machine tools so rigid mounting accuracy to a thou or less may be hard to achieve. Especially as common practice was to set-up the tapping head on a different machine to that used for drilling.

Rigid mis-alignment will likely snap small taps and create malformed threads with large ones. I found out the hard way that the combination of Pollard no 3 tapping head and Pollard 15 AY drill was quite capable of snapping a 10 mm tap when carelessly driven into the base of a blind hole. Gear drive is effective, if a bit noisy, but it doesn't slip like a belt when overloaded. Oops!

Clive

I have a Tapmatic Model SPD3 taps up to 1/4" , unfortunately no clutch though on this model range, but does have plenty of clearance/runout to align the tap with the drilled hole.

Emgee

Thank, all, for the info. Tug - that's a kind offer re the manual but I have the leaflet that was supplied with the head. It covers user instructions, diagram, spare parts etc. Studying the exploded view of its inside has convinced me to leave it well alone!

Andrew

Does anyone have a cross reference, or link to one on'tinterweb, between Tapmatic collet numbers and their Jacobs Rubberflex equivalents? I have a 'J116' which is marked up as a 2.5 to 4.5 ?Shank dia in mm? and that looks to be the small size for the Model 30 TC/DC Tapmatic listed as a Tapmatic part number 21600. I'm looking for the 4.5 to 6.5 collet which is a 21700 Tapmatic part number but my local engineering suppliers only recognise the 'Jacobs' designation. They have a 'J421' in stock which is indeed a 4.5 to 6.5 size but I think this is a larger collet than my tapping head will accommodate. I'm also after a Tapmatic 21500 which is the baby for this head at 1.0 to 2.5 capacity.

Regards

Martin

Looks like I have 'cracked it'!

The equivalent Jacobs Rubberflex code to the Tapmatic code is 'J117' for the Tapmatic 2.5 to 4.5 collet, which is Tapmatic ref. '21700' and 'J115' for the smaller Tapmatic ref '21500'.

Seems to be a logic in that somewhere!

Martin

I have a K3MT3 tapping unit, bought from Chronos, many moons ago, which has a fair amount of side play but seems to be unaffected by it. It still produces good tapped holes [most of the holes I want are 10 0r 12 mm ], so, cannot complain. Seems like floating play is considered to be OK.