Saturday, May 26, 2012

Harbor Freight


I'm starting to be able to make more time for rocketry and inevitably that means more machining.  In the past year or so most of the machining that I've done has consisted of indexing and drilling holes...a lot of indexing.  I use a Dremel rotary tool  in the lathes tool holder to mark the hole locations in whatever stock that I'm indexing.  The Dremel takes a 1/8" bit which corresponds to a #1 center drill.  I have a bunch of center drills but only one of them was a #1 so it borne the brunt of the abuse over the course of this last year indexing well over 300 hole locations.  I've noticed the last couple of times that I used this set-up that the bit was getting dull and last weekend indexing with it I felt that the accuracy was be compromised.  I figured that I would order a bunch of #1 bits from McMaster-Carr, but they were $14 a piece, fortunately Harbor Freight carried a set for $7.  Don't get me wrong, McMaster-Carr is great, they have almost anything you could ever need, some things you don't know that you need yet, the site functions well and is full of useful info, customer service and shipping are great, but a similar set (theirs has 6 bits vs 5) cost over $200.  I opted for Harbor Freight, but it took a few visits before I found them in stock.  I've actually been spending a lot of time  restocking, cleaning, and organizing... tools, batteries, bits, etc.

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