Tapered reamer question

[Cdfarabaugh 343]

Doing some steering work on my 1566 and need to replace the cylinder pin with the updated tapered one.  Broke down and just bought a reamer as I'm sure this wont be my last.  I saw that some use a drill to run the reamer.  Will a smaller impact work as well?  The reamer has a 1/2" hex to attach to so dont want to go crazy and break it as I'm sure that thing is brittle.  

[ky966boy 707]

I would say the hammer part of an impact would not  be good for it that being said we use impact on big taps at work with decent luck.

[billonthefarm 904]

I have always done it by hand.  The cast is soft.  Apply some pressure and it goes pretty easy really.  Done a few of them.

[Cdfarabaugh 343]

Just now, billonthefarm said:

I have always done it by hand.  The cast is soft.  Apply some pressure and it goes pretty easy really.  Done a few of them.

That's the hardest part is keeping pressure while turning.  what I've done so far has been tiring.  

[DOCTOR EVIL 592]

As the owner of a machine shop that I placed Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars of orders with told me one time, " Cast iron has the tensile strength of a rotten banana, ANYBODY can machine it."

[bkorth 268]

I I used an impact and it worked great, just don't push down, let it work on its own weight.

[Matt Kirsch 883]

Pressure is easy if you have a floor drill press. Just chuck the reamer in the press and use the press as a press to maintain pressure with one hand on the wheel, while turning the reamer with your other hand (leave enough out of the chuck to get a wrench on it). Assuming you can get the part to the drill press of course. Not sure what you're trying to ream...

Seems to me an impact would cause chatter and result in a rough finish.

[DT Fan 1,091]

Every impact I've ever been around, regardless of size, spins WAY too fast for a good reaming operation. Personally I would probably just turn it by hand.

[INTERNATIONAL 1466 1,563]

Have an old from the maybe 50's 3/4 inch Black and Decker drill. We call it the widow maker because it has tremendous power. It however runs real slow and it weighs about 50 pounds. It works well, just pull the trigger once and let it coast. Get carried away and you can put an inch and a half bolt in the hole.

[Jeff-C-IL 406]

Reamers prefer slow, steady, gentle pressure with lots of cutting oil.   A good sharp reamer shouldn't need a lot of force.  An slow drill or even a good ole fashioned drill hand brace works well.   I would not use a impact.  Might work, but you really don't want to be hammering the reamer cutting edges to the steel all the time.

[SAJ1000 3]

Cast iron is relatively soft and porus and is best machined without cutting oil ( at least on a non production basis)......if you use cutting oil it fills the pores of the material and will actually inhibit the reaming.

I saw a video of someone trying to ream out that tapered hole using cutting oil and i think he was saying it took an hour and a half or something like that.

I reamed out mine dry and it took maybe 20 minutes .  

 

[DOCTOR EVIL 592]

The IH Memphis produced axles were a better grade of gray iron, a class 30 was typical, 30,000# tensile. Think the Memphis axles were around class 40-45, 40,000-45,000# tensile.

The John Deere cast axles were ductile iron, or as they called it, nodular iron. A trace of magnesium was added the the metal and the iron was closely controlled during cooling so the carbon solidified as round globules instead of long flakes of carbon which weakened the metal, it would crack/break along the weak carbon grains.

   Ductile or nodular was also referred to as "semi-steel" by the American Foundryman Assoc when it was first developed in 1943.

Both cast gray iron and ductile machine easily.  The only bad thing about machining a L-O-T of gray or ductile iron is the amount of black carbon dust that ends up on EVERYTHING, like it did in the rearend casting area of Farmall.