# WANTED - Jig/drill bushings



## seanybaby (28 Apr 2009)

Has anyone got a supplier of these? I need 10, 6mm. Cheapest i've found is £4 each :shock: which is far too much.


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## Paul Chapman (28 Apr 2009)

Hi Sean,

Don't know whether you've tried here http://www.boneham.co.uk/drill_jig_bushes.htm

I've never bought from them but have spoken to them over the phone and they seemed very helpful.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## seanybaby (28 Apr 2009)

Cheers Paul, that's the place i found. Can't really justify £40 for a few bits of metal. While i was at it i was going to get some 8 and 10mm, so i get my money on the postage. But now i'm upto £120 :lol:


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## Alan Smith (28 Apr 2009)

Sean try J&L Industrial however suspect price will be similar.


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## xy mosian (3 May 2009)

Hi seanybaby,

Just as a thought. I have a plastic dowel drill guide thingy which has 10, 8 and 6mm drill bushes. Could something like that be a potential source? Of course if you need quite a few then the labour involved, removing them if suitable, might be prohibitive, and the costings may be all wrong.

xy


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## AndyT (5 May 2009)

In this thread https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23977 there's a post from Jim Hanna about using some cheap tubing cut into short pieces that should cost a lot less, unless you really need production quality surface hardening.


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## xy mosian (5 May 2009)

seanybaby,

Working in a production engineering capacity I came across the use of drill guides in a production environment. About 1300 operations per day. The biggest problem was the quickly buggered twist drills, as the jig etc. tended to rattle around during removal of the drill, it not being allowed to stop rotating. The operators were not very interested in correct positioning of the drill with respect to the guide before pushing the drill through the hole either. All this led to the active corners of the twist drills being quickly lost. Build up of swarf was also a problem as the flutes on the drills quickly became compacted and helped generate sufficient heat to 'blue' the drills, and sometimes smoke a bit. Now at the time most of the holes were 5mm or larger so the factory could just about live with the problems.

Fortunately 90% of the tasks requiring jigged drilling were solved with a jig redesign. 

The Answer. 

Get rid of the jig which was temporarily attached to the work.

I designed a jig which referenced the centre hole of the pillar drill table. The setup was to ensure that the drill was centred on the hole and the jig fitted to that. Adding fences, which in some cases were adjustable, allowed work to be aligned anywhere within reason. Job done. No more buggered twist drills, faster loading/unloading of work, jigs made very quickly in-house so no more costly drill guides, no more jig re-builds if the customer suddenly changed his design, easier swarf removal . All in all a reasonable success. Now I don't know if any of this is relavent to your job, but it may be worth looking at the job again.

xy


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## seanybaby (5 May 2009)

Thanks for the replies guys especially xy :wink: 

I'm going to order some at £4, at least i will have them for other jigs in the future. The jig that i'm making needs to be crack on, so using bits of old tube went out the window early on.


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## JonnyD (5 May 2009)

Could you use a 6mm dowel drill in a router? Using a guide bush and jig you should be able to get very accurate results.

Jon


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