Best metal threading taps?

[WJD]

I started my career as a Tool and Die maker. After five years I had the opportunity to join a major corporation in a management position. So I put my tools away and moved on.
Have now retired and getting re-interested in my old trade updating tools, etc.

I have forgotten whe best supplier(s) of metal threading taps? Will be doing minor machine work, restoring tractors, etc. Every tap I find in the Big Box stores looks like junk just waiting to break.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Bill.

 

[Gun guru]

I have been a machinist for a long time.
Morse, PTD, Hertel,
Buy ONLY USA made drills and taps, All your taps and thread dies must be High Speed steel to be of any use. Plain carbon steel are junk and WILL break. Taps and Drills from China are junk because the quality of their tool steel is schitt.
USA made drills will last many times longer than imported junk.
MSCdirect.com will have what you need. Also Production tool supply in Michigan will too.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Hansen, Ace, snap on are all made by the same maker. I buy the old kits at auction, when I see them, for under $ 25 (40 pc 1/2" and down). You always end up missing 1/4 20, 5/16 18, and or 3/8 16. Go to McMaster-Carr, Enco, or MSC, for replacements.

 

[petetx]

71 byr old retired machinist # 1 choice is greenfield followed by cleveland don't try to skimp on taps and drills

 

[WJD]

Thanks guys, Greenfield was the name I had used many years ago but could not remember.

I knew not to buy Chinese junk. You sure see a lot of it in the big box stores.

Thanks,
Again
Bill.

 

[Don-Wi]

We use Vega at work, and for a while we also used Dormer. Dormer's are the best atps I've ever used, but between the price and a few guys snapping them, we're going back to Vega. The dormer taps can be run considerably faster than the taps we use normally. In a plate with 100's of holes that adds up.

For a part timer or just hand tapping, don't bother with the Dormers.

Out of all the taps I've had break, most of them have been Greenfield.

Donovan from Wisconsin

 

[FC Andy]

I'll Second that. The key word is High Speed Steel, Abbreviated in the catalogs as HSS. High carbon steel is NOT HSS and is junk. Sure, they'll chase a few threads a few times, but they don't last very long.

I'm a machinist, at work we have taps made by OSG, North American (which are usually "specialty taps"), and Morse.

I've purchased a few loose dies that were the "pro cut" or something like that from the Production Tool catalog, and they are HSS, and worked well for me. I bought them as specialty, one time only stuff. One was 1/4-28, the other was 5/16-24, left hand for a turnbuckle for the park lock on the 806. I'll probably never use the left hand die again, but those "chineese" dies, in HSS variety, will work reasonably well, are fairly inexpensive, and are definetly better than the "High Carbon Steel" Junk from the non-industrial stores. -Andy

 

[Gun guru]

What machines do you run everyday?
I run a Bridgeport, Lathe, surface grinder.
I have piles of tooling, vises, a punch former,
You can never have too much stuff as a machinist.

 

[TIMAR]

How about ones for for stainless? Ruined one trying to clean up a 1/2 deep 3/8 hole the other day

 

[Don-Wi]

For tainless it comes down to the tapping oil you use if you have a good tap. Emuge is a great tapping oil if you can find it. Should be able to get it from MSC, and other industrial suppliers. Just a drop (it's really thick) will do on most smaller taps.

Donovan from Wisconisn

 

[GeneMO]

I have an old Craftsman set. But we bought them in 1977.

Used them often, but not hard, all these years doing regular farm type stuff.

Gene

 

[John Garner]

There is no one "best" maker of taps, or anything else for that matter, but there are several makers of very high quality taps. Among my favorites are these:

1. Balax "Threadfloer" thread-forming taps.

2. Reiff & Nestor taps.

3. OSG taps.

John

 

[Fred Martin]

Bill,
I'm a navy trained machinist, schooled at the MR-A School in San Diego in 1960. I'm 70 and retired from my machine shop in town, did repair work and production. Moved to the country and have a garage shop and I been thru the HSS and Carbon steel bit. Most of the tap drill charts are for approximately 75% depth of threads. If the tapped part has any depth of threads to it, the good book says that 54% Depth of threads will twist a standard bolt off before stripping the threads.
So, if I have to use a carbon steel tap (which most of the guys say are junk) you just have to be smarter than the metal (thats my saying). We know they're more brittle than HSS so, you make sure that they are sharp, no dullness on the cutting flutes (you can sharpen them) and make sure that they are straight with the hole you're tapping and maybe even drill the hole a small amount larger and they will do as good a job as HSS. Same way with the die, cut the diameter smaller than normal. I bought a metric and a SAE/USS set in carbon within the last couple of years and have never broken or dulled any of them. So, they are not junk, you just gotta know how to get by with them. Take a single cut file and see if the metal you're gonna tap or externally thread is soft enough. If it's tool steel and hard to file, it might break either one of them. Drill the hole larger than the tap drill chart says...and open the die as large as you can with the set screw and cut at least twice to get the threads to size. Remember..."you gotta be smarter than the metal!" To tap a hole absolutely straight you need to take a piece of mild steel and drill a true hole in it on a drill press the diameter of the tap and use it to guide the tap straight...You can even weld a piece of flat iron to it clamped down to the weld bench with a hole or slot in it and bolt it to a nearby threaded hole, center the one you're working on and get the job done right. I did this very thing on a hot rod 500+ cu.in. engine and saved it from the junk pile. I was offered to drive this thing down the strip at KilKare Dragway, it's a 10 second car. I haven't driven a car that fast since I had a 37 chevy coupe with a Chrysler hemi engine. If you are that silly when you're young, do you get that way again when you are older? I think I will drive the 68 chevy down the track Thursday night...so if you don't hear from me after that, well...And, if you don't understand any of my way of the machinist thing, just give me a holler (before Thursday...smile!) ohfred1941

 

[FC Andy]

I Program, Set up, and run Mazak Integrex Lathes. We make Blow Molds for plastic bottles, So we do small lots of work, lots of 1-2 piece orders, 12 pieces is a fairly substantial job for us. I rarely do anything with the surface grinder, and we use Bridgeports for drill presses around here- it's nice! Most of our bridgeports have Proto-trak CNC controllers on them, I can usually manipulate it to do what I want it to do. -Andy