I check out a 110 piece tungsten steel Metric tap and die set from VEVOR
Вставка
- Опубліковано 1 лип 2024
- VEVOR 110 PCS Tap and Die: s.vevor.com/bfQBJ9
Coupon code: VVPRO to save 5% off (used for all products)
This excellent set cuts Metric fine and coarse.
Other VEVOR Tap and Die Sets available: s.vevor.com/bfQFTj - Навчання та стиль
NOTE: The old Japanese metric set I referred to is actually metric standard (coarse) so I stuffed up there. My bad.
Also when buying taps and dies always seek those rated as suitable for stainless steel (if stated). I have found this to be a good gaurantee of wear resistance and cutting ability. Cheers Rob
Looks a very nice set Rob. the alloy you refer to for the die holder & tap wrench is usually 'Magalloy'.. magnesium alloy which is ok in general, but are known to crack at their weak points.
Thanks for the feedback on the metal. Cheers Rob
Hi Rob. A very nice set, I particularly like the fact that you get both intermediate and plug taps in each size. Cheers, Alan.
Hi Alan. Yes it's a good feature. Makes my original metric set look tiny. These are amazing value compared to buying taps separately. I also have a similar small set from Japan in Imperial. The Metric one gets by far the most use. I've never broken a die period, but nearly all the carbon steel taps have snapped. But it did take 50 years ;) Cheers Rob
Can never understand why some of these dies these days are non split type, they never used to be at all. Personally i dont like non split dies, I find them very difficult to get started & have to use a much larger taper on the material you are threading to get the dies to start cutting. It is easier in the case you showed where the bolt was already threaded & just wanted to cut the thread longer, Dies that had no split were only really called die nuts. Used specifically for just cleaning up damaged already cut threads. I have a set of cheap Chinese carbon steel non split taps & dies, besides many British & American HSS taps & split dies that I have aquired over 50 years. I preffer split dies 100% over these non split versions, Not sure weather it is down cheaper price of manufacturing some non split dies.
Good point. The larger dies in this set are split type and also thicker with a more gradual lead in. All the small diameter dies I have used are more difficult to start for the reasons stated. I think it is a cost factor. Cheers Rob
Well, well. Like cheztaylor8 and yourself I also have the orange boxed set, in my case inherited from my father - almost completely unused too! I made the mistake of using the M6 die on stainless steel, it coped but I've stuck to HSS on stainless since. The old taps and dies work quite well on aluminium and brass.
This was the only affordable set around back in the 1960's for the handyman. They do the job, but are no where near as good as the expensive HSS sets. Cheers Rob
I've bought alot of tools from vevor, so far I'm very satisfied, great looking tap and die set. Great review Rob...
Same here. Their stuff is good value. Cheers Rob
Tha is a lot of tools for the money. Thanks for the video keep on keeping on.
Nice set: especially the various coarse and fine threads! I'd get them myself -- if I lived down under...
Well, blow me down. I have the same set of taps & dies in the same orange plastic tray and of the same vintage, too. Mine is a mix of imperial & metric and has actually served me well.
The VEVOR set looks pretty good and they seem to cut nicely, too.
I also have a set of Imperial SAE/Whitworth in a slightly larger green plastic tray from Japan as well. Both sets have served me well over 50 years. Thet do the job. Cheers Rob
Rob in fact the Japanese set you bought 50 years ago are metric Coarse not metric fine sir! I have the exact same set, not marketed by Vevor but in the same case other than mine is blue in colour, unfortunately a lot of the dies are absolute crap, when looking carefully at the chip holes and the cutting edges, there are so many burrs where the cutter broke through and the holes have not been ground out to produce a proper cutting edge. All my dies below 6 mm are bloody useless and when i got the set at first I ruined several quite complicated parts that required threading and the end of the manufacturing process. Also every time I pick up a new thread size to use I always now run a scrounged edge slip stone along the tap flutes to ensure and burrs are removed and that the tap will work. I find that what you described as a plug tap is really a second tap, properly made plug taps should form a full thread within 180 degrees of the bottom of a blind hole. ( my late brother was a thread grinder for LAL taps and dies ( Lehman, Archer and Lane Ltd ) Rob have a look through your Whitworth and SAE collection of taps and dies and you may well find some LAL stuff in there. LAL started in the mid 1920's and closed for business around 1985. My brother was apprenticed there in 1965 through to 1970. He worked there until he married I'm 1972 and moved to Suffolk to work for a company called Nonparile engineering and they made specialised thread making tools for industry including the Rolls Royce aerospace devision. The company was formed by two former employees of LAL so when they took my brother on, they knew he had been trained properly. Sadly he died three years later and at that time I was a woodworker and had no interest in engineering and all his taps and dies got thrown away after his death. I deeply regret I didn't keep them as I would probably never needed to buy a tap or die ever.
I realised my mistake regarding the Japanese set being "coarse" after several other viewers put me right on that. My mistake. The plug taps in the set aren't as squared off as many I have, but would still work OK. It's a simple exercise to grind them back if you want. I've not had an issue with my Japanese dies apart from them being hard to start as they are button dies. I got around that by making a much larger die holder that enables me to put greater pressure on them when first starting. Overall the small sets work OK, but a quality set with large format split dies will always be much better. Cheers Rob
Interesting to say the old set was "metric fine" despite it being standard thread M10x1.5 etc... The new set looks the goods...
Good point Stephen. The old set was comprised of the most poular sizes which I thought were fine pitches, but after checking it is all coarse. My mistake. A full set of both pitches and having plug taps as well is going to cover all situations. Cheers Rob
eyup Rob
nice set of T's & D's, great review
regards
Kev
Thanks Kev. Interesting subject. Broken taps are about the worst thing in workshop life :( Cheers Rob
The problem I found with this type of tap sets is they have odd pitch taps like 10 x 0.75 (which I have never needed) and some of the more common sizes are missing. I tried tapping a 3/4UNF thread, the tap hardly cut, I borrowed a new Suttons tap from work, it was the same so I bought an old P&N tap on ebay, it cut like a champion. I have had some success with the smaller sizes.
Very true regarding unused pitches. The smaller sets usually only have the more common pitches and do the job, but without the larger sizes. Once again most tapping is usually below 13 mm. I have bought quite a lot of Sutton and Chinese HSS taps over the years and they have cut fine. The critical thing is they are rated for stainless steel, otherwise I wouldn't touch them. Cheers Rob
Looks like a decent set for the money.
Yes. Definitely value compared to similar sets being sold elsewhere.
A nice set. Of course, I myself would quickly ruin the two or three key sizes, but then that's the way that it goes.
I’d give a significant body part for proper GeeJay kits right now.
Very good review.
Take care.
The expensive brand name sets are still available and everything is at the optimum size and quality, but the price is a killer for most backyarders. Cheers Rob
Excellent review and demo Rob, Vevor are already sold out on this set here in the UK. Would be good if Vevor offered a BSW/BSF Set in tungsten. I already have a good range of metric, and UNC/UNF but would like a set in imperial. Cheers Nobby
Hi Nobby. I also have a similar vintage set of cheap t&d's from Japan in Imperial for SAE and Whitworth. Served me well over the years. Imperial is getting a bit scarce on the ground now in stores unless you buy individual items. Ebay/Amazon is probably your best bet and take a chance on quality. Provided they are rated as suitable for stainless steel they should be OK. I won't buy anything else. Cheers Rob
Hi Rob. Your old set is a standard pitch set, not fine. The fine ones are in your new set. Regards from germany.
Yes. Thanks for clarifying that. The old set has the most common sizes and on checking you are dead right. I always assumed it was fine. My bad. Cheers Rob
You´re welcome, Rob. In Germany, we call that " Normgewinde" (engl. Normal thread). The fine threads belong to the special ones and and cost double or even triple the price. Cheers.@@Xynudu
A 5.2mm pilot hole for an M6x1.0 tap? Standard rule of thumb is OD minus pitch for 60deg threads for 70% ish engagement. I usually only drill a bigger pilot for tougher materials, which wouldnt include mild steel.
That thread chart is from a nut and bolt manufacturer. It is 70% thread depth. I have a couple of others which list different drill sizes again depending on the type/hardness of metal being tapped. Obviously one drill size does not fit all situations. Cheers Rob
Hey Rob.
Not being described as "carbon steel" is a decent starting point, and the price is very attractive - it's currently at about 75 euros in Europe which is equivalent to buying 3 sets of name brand taps over the counter here (guess who lost his little box of M5 / M6 / M8 taps and had to replace them...).
That said, "tungsten steel" does not mean high speed steel, it means any steel with tungsten as its main alloying component, and the vevor wording very carefully makes no any mention of "high speed steel" or HSS. So my guess would be that it's not a tungsten-loaded HSS, but rather a tungsten alloyed tool steel. Better perhaps than carbon steel, but how much better? Remember that the higher the tungsten content, the more brittle the alloy, so you may find it easier to snap a "tungsten steel" tap than a "carbon steel" one.
Reviewing stuff like this is hard to do properly. You need to be looking at the thread quality in terms of finish and size, durability of the tooling (I'd suggest driving a tap to destruction in something properly tough, using the correct drill size - 5.2mm is not the correct drill size for a 6mmx100 threaded hole, see ISO 724) and seeing how many threads it makes before it dies. Take another one, brand new, check the tolerances of the threaded hole produced. Same thing for a the dies. Take one, and see how far you can get down a piece of pretreated rod before it goes pop. Check the quality and tolerances of the threads produced.
At the price, it's a pretty good deal, and all, but don't try to sell it as something it's not. It's a cheapish chinese tap and die set, but containing 90% of the threads you will never, ever, need, and almost certain to end up breaking the one thread size you really need it to do.
Yeah, that sounds negative. Sorry.
I did a bit of research on tungsten steel as described on tap and die sites and while hard to find, it basically stated that HSS was the base metal for the mix. This makes sense to me as tungsten and cobalt both increase brittleness. Adding either to carbon steel would make a dodgy situation even worse, so HSS seems the obvious answer. Tool steel may be used as well, I can't say. You have a valiid comment. Cheers Rob
@@Xynudu Hi Rob, thanks for taking the time to reply.
As I understand it, and I am most certainly not a metallurgist, tungsten has been used as an alloying compound for tool steels since well before the introduction of high speed steel, and although it's commonly used as an alloying component in HSS, referring to something as "tungsten steel" doesn't necessarily mean it is HSS. Given that there is absolutely no other information given on the actual steel used, I would, unless other information is given, assume that the phrase "tungsten steel", combined with the absolute lack of any mention of "high speed", is merely a marketing term, which /might/ mean that the steel in question has some tungsten in it. I don't trust much low price stuff that that comes out of china - I've got a few nominally "HSS" taps and dies from there about which I have significant doubts of their actual high speedness; one 10x1.0 die - well, died - after doing 2 shortish threads in mild steel...
It would be interesting to hit them up with a hardness tester or maybe a rockwell file set, and, like I said, do some serious quality and destruction testing. Vevor do at least seem to select half way decent stuff.
It's an interesting topic. The only other experience I've had with tungsten steel is with milling bits. These are definitely HSS based. Hard wearing BUT the downside is that they chip more easily than plain HSS as the brittleness has increased quite markedly. They are high concentration of tungsten though and milling is a demanding job. I had this in the back of my mind when I asked for these, but they have stood up to quite hard metal work OK. So while we could contemplate the metallurgy of the set endlessly, so long as they work and don't break easily is the main determining factor. Cheers Rob
Nice Set Rob. It's Important to Have All Three Types of Taps . I Don't Like Carbon Steel ! They Like To Snap! Cheers !
Hi Wayne. Yes they sure do snap without warning. Virtually all the carbon taps have broken. I can't remember the last time I broke a HSS tap. The carbon dies have lasted well, but being button dies they are hard to start. I made up a much larger and heavier die holder for them so I can apply a lot more starting pressure. They work OK in the lathe though as the tailstock can provide mucho pressure ;) Cheers Rob
@@Xynudu Rob , I Bought A Nice Tap Tool A While Back Called The Irwin Adjustable Tap Socket . You can Buy Them in A Pair If You Like . They Work Nice As You Can Use A 3/8" Ratchet , Sliding T Handle or Even A Breaker Bar I Guess .Use On Taps 👍 Cheers Again . Wayne.
Hi Wayne. That looks really good. I checked around and have bought a set identical but brand Hansa which I presume is a Chinese knock off - $48 AU free delivery. It has 3/8 " drive where as some other similar ones are only 1/4 ". I have plenty of quality SnapOn drives etc that will fit. Thanks for the heads up. If it's as good as it sounds I may even do a video on it. Cheers Rob
Trying to work out what tungsten steel is. Its not tungsten carbide thats for certain! Deliberate ploy to give the impression of being quality I wonder?
I researched this as well as it was new to me in taps and came across several tap and die manufaturer articles describing the metal composition (as stated). This is a quote from one other explanation.
" The most significant alloying elements found in tungsten high-speed steels include carbon, tungsten, cobalt, chromium and vanadium. Tungsten high-speed steels contain 4% chromium. T4 and T15 are the cobalt-base tungsten varieties that contain different amounts of cobalt."
Cheers Rob
Have the taps got a centre hole for a tap follower if using in the lathe?
Yes. The large sizes have a centre hole and the small ones have a point. Same as any other quality tap brand.
Being a yank I never got a metric tap and die set. I like my SAE threads. UNC 4evah!
We need Metric and Imperial in Oz due to the remnants of the Imperial era still being around. Cheers Rob
So just intermediate and plug taps? The ad calls them taper taps but they don't look like it.
Not taper taps. Something lost in translation ;) Cheers Rob
One needs to be cautious with respect to “thread fit” which is designated by “class”, 1, 2, and 3. Class 2 is what you want.
I made the mistake of purchasing a tap and die set from Harbor Freight that turned out to apparently be class 1 which cuts an excessively loose thread.
The Harbor Freight set is almost useless to me.
Interesting information. Unfortunately there's no way of knowing what applys with most cheaper sets. Cheers Rob
@@Xynudu Your test of the 6mm screw would indicate that those are class 2. Name brand taps and dies will be marked as to class. Any unmarked piece should be class 2. Anything else would be odd except of course for Harbor Freight. I got bit.
I have one of these sets. Useless, Struggles even in aluminium and will not go near steel. Not worth the space in the workshop!
Umm I did tap and thread hard steel in the video. Was your set actually sold by VEVOR ?