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1/16” spotting drills

mnl

Hot Rolled
Joined
Sep 7, 2007
Location
Maryland near DC
I have a couple of Albrecht 15 chucks, 1/16” max dia. that I use frequently, one on a sensitive drill adapter and one on a sensitive drilling machine. There are some times it would be nice to be able to spot before drilling. So far the smallest spotting drills I have been able to find are 2mm which are just a tad too large. The more common minimum size is 1/8” which is way too big. I can deal with this with the sensitive adapter, through musical chucks, not so with the little drilling machine. Does anyone know of a spotting drill that will fit an Albrecht 15-J0?
 
You could use an Albrecht 30 J0 chuck on a sensitive adapter. They are rated to close to .015 inch, about a 78 or 79 drill size. The 15 J0 chuck is rated to close to .008 inch. I have drill bits down to smaller than that, but they are pivot drills with oversize shanks. In fact, those pivot drills can be used for spotting.

Mascot is an old USA brand of watch repair tools. My old Mascot drills are carbon steel. No idea where they are made now.
.004 Inch to .050 Inch Mascot Flat Pivot Drills Sold Individually

No surprise that the Swiss make tiny drills, but no worry about quality here:
SPHINX(R) Drills: SPIREC Micro Drills - Penn Tool Co., Inc
Pilot drill

Larry

Flatbits 2.JPG
 
I could get an Albrecht 30, but the tariff is a bit painful when I already have the 15s. The Mascot drills look to be spot on. I’m going to pick up a few and give them a try. Thanks Larry.

Cheers,

—Michael
 
Have you looked at engraving tools? I prefer them over spot drills for anything under a 3/16” hole

Most engraving tools these days have 1/8" straight shanks, so no use in a 15 J0 chuck. I did notice that Sphinx has tiny engraving tools, but their spotting drills are probably better suited to spotting.

Larry
 
Man, I hate to say this as I will probably get reamed, but if this is just for occasional use and it is really hard to find small shank suitable bits, I would probably just abrasive saw a .0625 so that just a 16th of flutes remained and then use an fine diamond file and sharpen it. Would take only a couple minutes with a good magnifier and a steady hand. I (and a good number of others on this forum I am sure) have sharpened much smaller bits in this fashion to good effect. I was forced to learn this on a weekend with a job I needed to ship on Monday and several dull #77 bits. It was far easier than I imagined and the hand sharpened bits cut very nicely.

Denis
 








 
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