Bits for LR 32??

[rookie08]

Need some advice please on those of you that use the LR 32 system.  I bought the base kit w/o the bits or the systainer.  For the 5mm bits that originally came with the full kit

2 carbide-tipped 5 mm shelf pin bits (one for through holes and one for stopped pin holes

Product No. 491066 DOWEL DRILL ROUTER BIT, HW 5X30MM Dowel Drill Router Bit, Hw 5X30mm

http://www.festoolusa.com/products/routers/router-bits/8mm-shank/dowel-drilling-bits/dowel-drill-router-bit-hw-5x30mm-491066.html

Product No. 491064 DOWEL DRILL BIT HW 5X30MM Dowel drill, HW, D5/B30/L53.5, shank dia. .31" (8mm)

http://www.festoolusa.com/products/routers/router-bits/8mm-shank/dowel-drilling-bits/dowel-drill-bit-hw-5x30mm-491064.html

Is the difference just the length or is there a stop on one and not the other? They do look a bit different in the links. ???

I will be making both through holes and stopped pin holes.  Do you find yourself using both bits?  I’m trying to decide whether to order both or just pick up a 5mm Freud bit at the local woodcraft.

Any comments are appreciated!

Thanks

James

 

[tbellemare]

The one for stopped holes is a brad point, it makes a flat bottom hole with a little, shallow hole in the middle. The other is for through holes.

Tom

 

[VO2MAX]

Is the difference just the length or is there a stop on one and not the other? They do look a bit different in the links. ???



You got me wondering about the details so I dug out my kit in the shop and took a few pictures. Both bits are about 54mm long. First image post on FOG.

 

[ccarrolladams]

Hi Rookie and Everyone,

My shop constructs custom cabinets for many of the leading Southern California designers. Therefore we drill thousands of shelf pin holes each week.

My experience over 60 years of using the 32mm system is that through holes are mostly used for products such as closet organizers. Quite frankly our wholesale clients go the last mile sourcing such products rather than pay our prices.

Therefore the vast majority of our shelf pin holes are stopped, typically 5mm in dia and 9mm deep. When we drill those using the Festool OF1010 router in combination with the Holy rails and LR32 Guide Plate, we use the cat 491 066 bit. Back in the days when I used a line boring machine the stop hole bits looked and performed very much like the cat 491 066, except that half of them were made to spin in the reverse direction.

Yes, my shop has more than one CNC nested router. However, frequently we find it more efficient to use the rails and router. I select the CNC method when the part requires some other machining requiring CNC or there is something odd about the shelf pin holes. Although 8mm collets are available for CNC routers, and we do own many of them, because the CNC routers are typically 12.5 hp with a high minimum speed, compared to a bit over 1 hp with the OF1010, I buy 5mm stop bits designed for CNC use.

As you get way into using System 32 cabinet hardware, you will find a need for 35mm and 20mm hinge hole bits, choice depends on brand of hardware. Certain brands also use 8mm stopped hole for screws. For other styles of screws 3mm stop bits are used.

Fortunately Festool USA still sells these bits, although not every local dealer stocks them.

 

[tbellemare]

Is the difference just the length or is there a stop on one and not the other? They do look a bit different in the links. ???



You got me wondering about the details so I dug out my kit in the shop and took a few pictures. Both bits are about 54mm long. First image post on FOG.

The bit on the right in the above image is 491066, what I am calling a brad point and is for stopped holes. The one on the left is 491064 and is for through holes.

Tom

Tom

 

[rookie08]

Thanks Tom, makes much more sense now. 

VO2MAX, thanks for the picture, makes it easy to see the difference Tom spoke about and

[welcome]

Carroll thanks for the info.  It's always great to hear your perspective given all the different experiences you have.  I have the 20mm from Festool I bought when I was going to make an MFT extension (but ended up finding an additional table for a great price).  I have a 35mm as well, so there is a few bucks saved.  (Which will be needed I suspect when the XL Domino hits later in the year  [tongue])

All, do you find you use the through bit so you don’t get tear out on the opposite side

or

will the brad point 491066 achieve the same clean cut; I’m going through plywood (no melanine etc)

Thanks!

 

[ccarrolladams]

Thanks Tom, makes much more sense now. 

VO2MAX, thanks for the picture, makes it easy to see the difference Tom spoke about and

[welcome]

Carroll thanks for the info.  It's always great to hear your perspective given all the different experiences you have.   I have the 20mm from Festool I bought when I was going to make an MFT extension (but ended up finding an additional table for a great price).  I have a 35mm as well, so there is a few bucks saved.  (Which will be needed I suspect when the XL Domino hits later in the year  [tongue])

All, do you find you use the through bit so you don’t get tear out on the opposite side

or

will the brad point 491066 achieve the same clean cut; I’m going through plywood (no melanine etc)

Thanks!

Controlling tear-out is vital when doing fine woodworking.

Brad-point bits are very useful for drilling wood, largely because you can plunge the point into the wood before starting a drill. This ensure the hole will be in the right place. When using a plunge router and the LR32 Guide plate with a Holy rail, that use of the brad-point is not really necessary. For one-sided shelf-pin holes having a flat bottom is important so the hole can be fairly shallow. A 10mm deep hole (which is a common thing with shelf-pins) leaves room for error when using 18mm material, but there is no wriggle room with 12mm material.

The downside of conventional brad-point bits is that they are not intended for through drilling. The only way to reduce tear-out with a flat-bottom stop bit used for a through hole is a firm sacrificial surface backing the drilling.

The spade bit intended for through drilling causes much less tear-out. I have always used a sacrificial surface under a spade bit, but with fine veneer I do not have to be so fastidious that the surface is smooth under the hole with a spade bit. Another advantage for the spade bit in production of through holes is that it one heck of a lot easier to sharpen them. Normally I would not consider re-sharpening a 5mm stop or brad-point bit. Because of the price point of Festool 5mm stop bits we have considered re-sharpening them. Unfortunately the time and effort required makes this impractical with brad-points that small.

I find it no more difficult to sharpen a Festool 5mm spade bit than any more-or-less conventional drill bit.

To be fair, my experience has been when using the OF1010 at the appropriate fairly slow speed, the Festool 5mm stop bits last a long time.

The significantly more expensive 5mm bits we use on the CNC routers last no longer, so the cost of bit per hole is more. There is labor savings using the CNC machine, but after you factor in the value of the big CNC machines (USA$150,000) compared to less than USA$1000 for an OF1010 with LR32 system, you need to make millions of holes on the CNC machine. Also, electricity is not free, sad to say. The OF1010 uses less than 1000 watts drilling 5mm holes (actually about 350 watts). The router on the CNC machine can use 12.5hp, although for drilling 5mm holes it draws about 2hp, but that is continuously. And, the vacuum hold down on the CNC machine is using 40hp continuously.

This is why I have so many Holy rails of various length and several OF1010 on LR32 Guide plates. With experience and paying attention the LR32 approach is as accurate as the CNC for shelf-pin holes. Sometimes the LR32 solution is actually faster.

Bottom line is without the experience of using hand routers and drilling a lot of shelf-pin holes with various fixtures you will never be effective programing a CNC machine.

 

[BMH]

I will be using the LR 32 tomorrow on my first project. What is the correct low speed for the 5mm bit?

Thank you,

Bruce

 

[ccarrolladams]

I will be using the LR 32 tomorrow on my first project. What is the correct low speed for the 5mm bit?

Thank you,

Bruce

Hi Bruce and Everyone,

I have always set my OF1010s to "1" for 5mm and larger LR32 bits. I use "2" for the smaller 3mm bit. I do not routinely use the OF1400 with an LR32 Guide Plate, but when I tried doing so as an experiment, I found the same speed settings worked very well.

One step in setting up the OF1010 or OF1400 on the LR32 Guide Plate is centering the router. A centering mandrel is supplied for this purpose.

 

[Brice Burrell]

I will be using the LR 32 tomorrow on my first project. What is the correct low speed for the 5mm bit?

Thank you,

Bruce

Hi Bruce and Everyone,

I have always set my OF1010s to "1" for 5mm and larger LR32 bits. I use "2" for the smaller 3mm bit. I do not routinely use the OF1400 with an LR32 Guide Plate, but when I tried doing so as an experiment, I found the same speed settings worked very well.

One step in setting up the OF1010 or OF1400 on the LR32 Guide Plate is centering the router. A centering mandrel is supplied for this purpose.

Interesting, I've always used them at full speed with great results.  Also, I don't recall the Festool trainers mentioning a low speed for the LR32 bits.  Unless I just happened to miss it the three times I have seen Steve or Brian demo the LR32.

 

[whitesys]

During class, Steve said that the 35mm hinge boring bit should be run at the lowest speed.

Other than that, there were no recommendations on the 5mm or 8mm bits although we set the 1010 at the highest speed for those bits.

Dave

 

[ccarrolladams]

Interesting, I've always used them at full speed with great results.  Also, I don't recall the Festool trainers mentioning a low speed for the LR32 bits.  Unless I just happened to miss it the three times I have seen Steve or Brian demo the LR32.

Hi Brice and Everyone,

Like you, I have spent a lot of quality time discussing Festools with Steve Bace and Brian Sedgeley.  I have owned a whole lot of Festools since well before End User Classes were offered.  Therefore I had to do some experimenting with Festools to find the approaches which work for me.

When asked, by Steve, Brian or others in classes or at trade shows, I tell about my own experiences. I do not recall any class instruction relative to the speed setting on the OF1010 or OF1400 when using the 5mm stop bit during Cabinet Construction or the 35mm bit during Doors and Drawers. I made it clear how I was setting the OF1010 I was using in the Doors class. For the Cabinet class I was using one of my own OF1010.

Probably it is possible to run the 5mm stop bit at higher speed. My own extensive experiments have failed to show an improvement of hole quality with any of the cabinet material I have used.

Like you I am in the business of woodworking. Because I concentrate on making custom cabinets, and am best known for my frameless European designs, over the course of 60+ years I have drilled a whole lot of 5mm shelf pin holes. Already today I devoted 2 hours to cutting a day's supply of parts on the beam saw while also making some other parts on the adjacent CNC router. Just before my early lunch break I spent an hour adding the System 32 holes to a batch of cabinet sides. For me this is a fairly typical morning. The thing is over these years I have found approaches which work effectively for me.

To remain in business I need to save money in ways which do not compromise the quality of my cabinets. The number of hinge hole I can make with an individual 35mm or 20mm bit is not a real problem because those can be so easily sharpened. As I have shared previously it is not practical to re-sharpen small brad-point bits. For the line boring machines those were always expensive. Festool's 5mm stop bits are also expensive. I agree they are fair value. I cannot dream of making them for any less money. Hence my experiments which found I could make more holes per bit by reducing the rpm of the OF1010, and doing so did not require me to make fewer holes per hour.

I call this a win-win, but it is refreshing to read that other experienced woodworkers have reached a different conclusion.

Dave, have you conducted your own experiments with 5mm and 8mm bits? If so, did you find a decrease in hole quality by reducing the rpm of the router?

 

[whitesys]

Dave, have you conducted your own experiments with 5mm and 8mm bits? If so, did you find a decrease in hole quality by reducing the rpm of the router?

Have not checked to see if there was any difference when the speed was reduced.

 

[BMH]

Just finished routing out a lot of 5 mm holes with a 1400 and the LR 32. My arm is tired, is the 1010 easier to use, easier plunge mechanism?

Bruce

 

[ccarrolladams]

Just finished routing out a lot of 5 mm holes with a 1400 and the LR 32. My arm is tired, is the 1010 easier to use, easier plunge mechanism?

Bruce

The OF1400 is designed as a marvelous versatile router. It has more than twice the power needed to drill even 35mm hinge holes. Consequently it weighs more than the OF1010, meaning it needs stronger plunge return springs. In conventional plunge router use you do not constantly plunge.

My experience has been that when planning to routinely do LR32 drilling, the less fatiguing choice is the OF1010