How to make an engraver with your own hands - components and assembly order. Caring for the speedometer and flexible shaft Making a working nozzle
Such interesting device, as a flexible shaft for a drill, it is intended for drilling holes in hard-to-reach places. Hard-to-reach places are such areas when access to them is limited due to large sizes power tools. To facilitate the work of power tools, tool manufacturers have invented such a device as a flexible shaft for drills and screwdrivers, which are easy to buy on the Internet or any tool store. It is a flexible nozzle device that transmits torque to a tool that is not aligned with the electric motor.
Why you need a flexible shaft for a drill
The design of the product in question is quite simple, but despite this, the device is multifunctional. The flexible drive consists of two elements: a cable with an armored base and a soft body. On one part of such a nozzle there is a special tip with which the shaft is attached to the chuck of a screwdriver or drill.
The second part, in which the nozzles are fixed, is equipped with a cartridge or a special retainer for interchangeable bits. The presence of a cartridge on a flexible shaft for drills allows you to fix drills and other types of nozzles in the design of the device. Such equipment is used in medicine, and more precisely, in the field of dentistry. With the help of the products in question, the functioning of boron machines is ensured, with which holes are drilled in the teeth to install a seal. There is a factory-made flexible shaft for a mini engraver drill on sale, which is used by craftsmen who repair electronics, watches and other small appliances.
A flexible shaft for a drill is rarely used in construction, but without it, it is sometimes simply impossible to get to the fastener to screw it in or unscrew it. The cases when a power tool cannot do without a flexible shaft include moments when there is no direct access to work with a drill or screwdriver. The considered nozzle allows to carry out different kinds works:
- Drilling holes in wood, concrete and metal
- Sanding and deburring parts
- Screwing and unscrewing various screws and self-tapping screws
Using a nozzle (it is also called a “flexible spiral” or “guta-percha extension”) for drilling holes in concrete or metal is not very convenient, since this will require reliable stop, which cannot give a useful device due to its design features.
This is interesting!A nozzle called a flexible shaft can be used not only on drills or screwdrivers, but also on an angle grinder. However, with this tool you need to be extremely careful and attentive. After all, the spindle speed reaches 11,000 rpm, so you need to work with the use of personal protective equipment.
Flexible shaft design for drills and screwdrivers
The considered flexible shafts for drills differ depending on the manufacturer and the cost of the product. The basis of any considered device is a steel cable inside an armored base. It is with the help of such a cable that the torque is transmitted from the drill chuck or screwdriver to the nozzle lock at the end. Let's delve into the design of the device.
The base is made of armored wire having the shape of a spiral. To protect internal structure device and avoid leakage of lubricant, the outside of the spiral wire is covered with various soft materials. Often rubber is used for this, but there may be other materials, such as silicone. Lubricant is poured into the power tool bit to reduce friction and increase the protection of the inner cable from abrasion.
Bearings play an important role in the design of the device. After all, it is to them that the cable is attached, which rotates during operation, and transmits torque from the tool chuck to the working nozzle. Cheap models are not equipped with bearings, but they have a low service life. The price of the device in question is low, which makes the device affordable. If you are going to just buy a flexible shaft for a drill so that you don’t have to do it yourself, then you can implement this in any construction center or online store.
Make your own flexible shaft on a drill
Price quality device high, especially considering the fact that if you need to use the product, then in a one-time amount. In order not to have to buy it, it is easy to make a flexible shaft on a drill with your own hands.
For the manufacture of flexible shafts for do-it-yourself drills, you will need to take any braided wire. It can also be purchased, which will cost ten times cheaper than buying a ready-made nozzle. If you plan to wind a spiral wire on a cable yourself, then you need to understand that it is impossible to do this at home. After all, armored steel is used as a spiral base. During the operation of such a device, the steel cable rotates inside the shell, and the armor in the form of a spiral wire bends in any position, but does not move. During operation, the device is held by the hand by the spiral wire.
At the end, a shank for a flexible shaft is made, which is installed in the drill chuck. To do this, use the tail of a damaged drill. The cable is connected to the shank by welding (other connection methods are unacceptable). A collet chuck is attached to the second end of the wire, which can be taken from another power tool.
There are a lot of advantages of a home-made flexible shaft for screwdrivers and drills, but the most important is its low cost. Having applied such a nozzle once for work, you can find out what its main advantage is, and why manufacturers came up with this device. The ease of making a nozzle in the form of a flexible shaft for a drill on its own contributes to the fact that it is more interesting to make it yourself than to buy it on the Internet or a tool store.
A flexible shaft for a drill or screwdriver, a thing that is rarely used. However, if you want to drill a hole, or drive a screw into hard to reach place where a screwdriver does not fit, it is better to have this tool available. Even if the drilling site is open, but located, for example, under the ceiling, it is better and more convenient to hold on weight the light handle of the flexible shaft than the entire drill, which weighs a lot. IN this case it can be hung by tied straps somewhere nearby, and it can be easily drilled or screwed in with a shaft. In addition, the flexible shaft is perfect for a drill machine or engraver.
If you have an engraver and you like, for example, to carve bone, wood or stone, then with this tool things will go much faster and more conveniently. But in the manufacture of a flexible shaft, there is one nuance, you need to determine for which tool you need a flexible shaft. If, for example, for a drill or a screwdriver, then it is better to use a brake cable from a motorcycle (or similar), and if for a machine drill or an engraver, then a cable from a bicycle will be more convenient here. I assembled a flexible shaft, the manufacture of which I will describe below, for a powerful electric drill, which is why I used a motorcycle brake cable. The engraver I recently purchased also pulls it - you can grind, cut and drill, but during operation, the speed drops and the engraver engine heats up quickly. It is understandable, for such a small machine, a motorcycle cable is too heavy. So for him, on occasion, I will assemble a flexible shaft lighter and thinner, from a bicycle cable ... I will not hide that the manufacturing process is quite long, but at the same time interesting.
It will take
- Two bearings from old roller skates (or similar).
- Steel cable in a protective sleeve, from a motorcycle (or from a bicycle).
- Metal tube suitable for diameter outside diameter bearings.
- Wooden handle from an old soldering iron (or similar wooden tube).
- Steel rod for the shaft, on which the cartridge will be installed later.
- Collet clamp-chuck, with an internal hole, for the shaft rod of your choice.
- Metal tube, with a diameter for the inner diameter of the bearings.
Necessary tools and consumables for work:
- Soldering iron, tin and flux.
- Boron typewriter or engraver, with saw blade and a 3 mm drill.
- Pliers.
- Second glue with soda.
- Insulating tape.
- Scissors.
- Solid oil and machine oil.
Production of a flexible shaft
First of all, let's prepare the rope. It must be pulled out of the protective sleeve. In order for it not to bloom when we cut off the restrictive seal, it must be soldered with tin. They smeared it with flux, heated it, soaked it with tin, cut it off.
We take it out of the sleeve. On any brake cable, at the other end there is a threaded rod for adjusting traction. We cut off the thread from it, so that a small segment remains, a centimeter and a half. Next, we solder a metal tube to this segment, on which we will put bearings in the future. We also smear the surfaces to be soldered with flux, put the tube on a segment, throw a piece of tin into the tube, and heat it with a soldering iron until the tin melts and spreads over all the greased surfaces.
While the tube with the soldered cable is cooling, we will prepare the rod for the cartridge. I took it from the CD drive. But you can any suitable caliber. We adjust this rod to the inner diameter of the tube by winding electrical tape around it until the desired caliber is reached.
We insert the rod into the tube, smearing it with glue.
When the glue inside seizes, the connection will turn out no worse than from soldering, this can be seen in the video ... Next, we will prepare the holder body. For this purpose, I took an aluminum case from a perfume bottle - it fit almost perfectly under the bearings. We drill a hole in the end of the body for the exit of the rod for the cartridge.
We put bearings on the tube with the cable. My bearings came up clearly, but to be sure, I also dripped glue, for greater reliability.
Next, we also fit the bearings under the housing with electrical tape.
We drip glue inside the case, and insert the tube with the bearings put on it. We arrange the bearings in such a way that there are free edges of the housing. About a centimeter.
Don't forget to put a drop of oil on the bearings. We carefully monitor that the glue does not get into the bearing mechanism, otherwise all the work done will go down the drain! I used the glue Cosmo CA-500.200 - it is extremely difficult to tear off something glued to it, that's why I preferred it to soldering ... So, the shaft body is ready. It remains to attach the wooden part of the handle with a cable sleeve.
We pass the sleeve into the wooden handle, fasten it with glue inside the handle. Next, generously lubricate the cable with grease.
We thread it into the handle with a sleeve and fasten, again with glue, the wooden handle to the aluminum case.
Install the chuck.
If the resulting flexible shaft is planned to be used only for a drill or a screwdriver, then the work is over - we fix the protruding end of the cable into the drill chuck, and use it with pleasure!
And if you made a shaft for the engraver from a thin bicycle cable, then you also need to make a rigid protection for the cartridge so that the elastic cable does not loosen it. Each engraver has a cap on the thread below the cartridge. This cover is removed and, if necessary, a plastic cartridge with a flexible shaft cable is screwed onto this place. We need a thread, like on a cover, a piece of plastic pipe into which the thread will fit, and a tapering end into which we will thread the cable sleeve. There is nothing complicated here; we glue all the parts together, put it on the sleeve of the cable, clamp the end of the cable in the collet chuck, and wind the resulting cap onto the body of the engraver.
He won't let the spinning steel cable loosen the brass collet chuck. I made a flexible shaft for a drill, but to show clearly how to use it with an engraver, I also made such a protective cap.
Such a shaft does not take up much storage space - it is easy to twist it into rings, and hang it on a carnation in a barn or pantry, and in right moment he will help you make a hole in a hard-to-reach place, or screw a screw there.
During the operation of the vehicle, the following operations should be performed periodically. 1. Check the tightness of the nuts connecting the flexible shaft to the speedometer and to the gearbox. The nuts must be hand-tightened to failure, while the slack in the fastening of the tips of the flexible shaft shell should not be felt when they are rocked by hand.
Check the correct installation of the flexible shaft. The flexible shaft of the speedometer on the car is mounted with smooth bends with a radius of at least 150 mm. It should be taken into account, especially when changing the flexible shaft, that the presence of sharp bends leads to a reduction in the service life of the shaft and, in addition, can cause vibrations of the speedometer needle and knocks. Therefore, when inspecting the car, you should check the correct installation of the shaft. The shaft must be fixed with brackets and must not have sharp bends (with a radius of less than 150 mm), especially near its ends, as a result of excessive shaft tension.
The drive roller of the speedometer is lubricated at the factory with vaseline oil, which is impregnated with a wick inserted into the hole on the shank of the device. This hole is closed from above with a stamped plug. The stock of oil put in during assembly is enough for a run of about 25 thousand km. After this run, the speedometer must be removed from the car, the plug on the shank is removed, the wick is removed from the hole and re-impregnated with vaseline oil MVPGOST 1805-51. If the plug covering the hole is damaged during removal, it should be replaced with a new one made of brass.
At the factory, when assembling flexible shafts, a special thick lubricant is put inside their shell, which is designed to work both at low (up to -50°С) and at high temperatures (up to +60°С). Under these conditions, said lubricant does not solidify and does not flow out of the shell.
Lubrication is laid in an amount sufficient for a car run of 15-20 thousand km.
After the specified period, and sometimes even earlier, for example, if the car is systematically operated in hot weather or if less lubricant is put into the shell during the assembly of the flexible shaft established norm, it becomes necessary to add lubricant inside the shell. This is detected because the speedometer needle fluctuates when the car is moving and the flexible shaft starts to knock.
For lubrication, remove the flexible shaft from the vehicle and disassemble, i.e., pull the flexible cable out of the sheath, thoroughly rinse the cable and sheath in kerosene and then dry.
After drying, apply a thin layer of lubricant NK;30 GOST 3275-46 or GOI-54 GOST 3276-54 to the cable and carefully insert it into the sheath.
When installing a flexible shaft in place, you must strictly observe the route along which it was laid. After installation, the union nuts of the shaft must be sealed.
Malfunctions of the speedometer and flexible shaft
The most common speedometer malfunction is mechanism jamming. With such a malfunction, the speedometer should be replaced or sent to a workshop for repair.
In operation, cases of breakage of the flexible shaft cable are often observed. When replacing such a shaft, it is necessary to check the speedometer and shaft for sticking. To do this, it is necessary to mount the flexible shaft on the car (the bending radii of the shaft must be at least 150 mm) and before connecting, turning the cable several times, make sure that there is no jamming. The cable should rotate freely by hand, and the speedometer needle should move away from zero.
I'm probably not mistaken in saying that most home craftsmen dream of having a universal drill at their disposal. How many possibilities does it open to the owner! Engraving, abrasive processing of parts of complex configuration, independent production dies and molds, drilling and countersinking of holes located in hard-to-reach conventional drill places, jewelry work is far from complete list operations that this mechanism allows. Therefore, it is not surprising that a drill, due to its large growth, is not easy to purchase in a store.
However, this mechanism can be done by yourself. I offer a comparative simple design drills based on an electric drill.
First of all you will need flexible drive. I recommend using a speedometer cable for this purpose - it will not be difficult to purchase it at any auto and motorcycle parts store. I used the flexible shaft of the IZH motorcycle speedometer, type GV 119A-01, under which all the dimensions shown in the figure are calculated. This part fully met the operational requirements, and almost did not require any modifications - it was only necessary to cut the M16 thread on the surface of one of the shell tips (Fig. 1). With equal success, you can use speedometer cables and other types.
Appearance The drill is shown in Figure 2. The electric drill is fixed in a vice using the device included in the kit: a bracket or a special clamp (its dimensions are given for a drill of the IE-1032 type; in other cases, appropriate changes will be required). The working part of the machine is a short rigid shaft located in the handle and driven by a cable. collet clamp. In the latter, a working tool is attached.
The device of the main elements of the drill is clear from Figure 3. The transmission of torque is carried out through the tip 9, clamped in the cartridge. The end of the flexible shaft 10 protruding from the shell has a square section. It is fixed in the tip as follows: it is inserted into a hole equal to the diameter of the shaft (in our case 3.2 mm), to a depth of 15 - 20 mm and carefully minted (the tip is riveted or crimped to a length of 10 - 15 mm).
1 - shaft tip; 2,4 - shell tips; 3 - flexible shell; 5 - union nut; 6 - flexible shaft
Rice. 2. Drill assembly:
1 - electric drill; 2 - clamp; 3 - additional bracket; 4 flexible shaft; 5 - handle; 6 - collet clamp; 7 - working tool; 8 - vice, 9 - M10 screw for tightening the clamp and fastening the bracket (with a nut). (Dimension "c" is selected according to the width of the vise jaws)
1 - collet nut; 2 - replaceable collet; 3 - spacer bushings; 4 - rigid shaft; 5 - handle; 6 - union nut; 7 - adapter sleeve; 8 - nut M10; 9 - tip; 10 - flexible shaft; 11 - additional bracket; 12 - bearings; 13 - handle cover. (* - dimensions used for bearings)
The adapter sleeve performs several functions: it plays the role of a plain bearing, serves to fasten the shaft shell, and also presses the flexible attachment to an additional bracket that ensures the alignment of the shaft and the axis of the drill. You can buy a metal cutter for a drill, and it is desirable to make a bushing from bronze or brass.
The working body consists of a rigid shaft with a collet clamp, a handle with a cover, two spacer bushings and two rolling bearings. The handle and cover can be made of any metal - bronze, steel, duralumin. Inside the handle, a M16 counter thread is cut from one end to secure the tip of the flexible shaft shell. The position of the bearings is fixed by spacers.
The rigid shaft is machined from steel and, if possible, hardened. The groove for connecting with the tip of the flexible shaft and the thread for interchangeable collets at the opposite end are made before hardening.
Interchangeable collets are made for tools with three shank diameters: 2.4 and 6 mm. The outer dimensions of the collets are the same.
Bearings are used from an old gear motor. They have an outer diameter of 16 mm, an inner diameter of 4 mm and a clip thickness of 5 mm. However, instead of them, you can use any other small-sized rolling or even sliding bearings, turning them from brass or bronze.
