Mag Drill Chuck

Any one ever use a mag drill to Tap with? Was thinking of using the same method Fireball is using on the newest DIY table to secure 4 x 8 top on the table that I’m still working on.

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I might try it with mine if it was a through hole, as it does not have a way to control RPMs
I did use it with a tap guide to hold my tap while doing some blind holes in 3/4" plate.

Any one ever use a mag drill to Tap with?

I have not yet. I would think you would just need the right features - reversible and speed control, but I could be wrong.

yea that’s what I was thinking. the beast Milwaukee I have has all that. I think that’s going to be the cheapest route I can go to secure the top. Those leveling studs Fireball sells are awesome and would be way easier but on 1 foot spacing it was gonna be pretty pricey. I’ll 100 % wish I had spent the money the first time i break a tape…

taps | McMaster-Carr
I’m no machinist but was figuring on using the chip clearing tape here as it is a through hole i’ll be taping. I talked to a buddy of mine who is an outside machinist, and he did recommend trying to use mag drill on anything less than 1/2-inch taps. that why I figured on the 1/2- 13 thread. a little bigger than what comes with the DIY kit i believe.

I tapped some blind holes in my table by hand. I did use my mag drill to get the tap started straight. Drilling a straight hole or starting a tap by hand is something I can no longer do well.

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I can’t find evidence of it anywhere, but I’ve definitely used mine to run a tap and we’ve got the same mag drill as I recall. It wasn’t a great experience in some ways, but it beat turning a cheap tap by hand as it didn’t want to cut. It got significantly better once I got a good tap. If you’ve got a high quality tap, it makes a huge difference. Go with a nice spiral flute bottoming tap if you can (US, German or Japanese made) and be sure you use lots of tapping oil is all I can say.

They were bought by Shop Sabre last year (2024). My experience with them has been exceptionally good. Being bought by Shop Sabre allowed them to develop new machines and expand their offerings.

Yours is literally the only bad comment I’ve ever seen about them. I’ve owned several of their machines and they have all been exceptional value for money. The last one I bought had a missing part and they overnight shipped the missing part at their cost.

It took me a bit to track through the side conversation but it is good to know that Langmuir Systems was bought out by Shop Sabre last year. One thing I have noticed is that there are some valid complaints in the forums around getting updates to the MR1, especially on the software side. So much so that, some people are converting their MR1s to other controller boards so they can leverage LinuxCNC, for example. I think the big thing is that they communicated that there would be fixes coming soon and it has been over a year with no updates released. Prior to that, they came out with a number of fixes. The timing of that acquisition is oddly in line with that. I’m wondering if that had anything to do with it.