Drilling Holes with OF1400 at Fixed Intervals

[peter halle]

Today was a play day in the shop (Code Name - Chaos) and needed to drill many 5 mm holes in a straight line at fixed intervals (2 inch on one project and 3/4 on another).  Here is how I did it using a guiderail, the Festool 5mm router bit and some other accessories I already had.

Drew a straight line and marked starting hole location.  Inserted router bit and set depth, etc.  Set guide rail and adjusted router center marks to the line and also the starting hole.  Installed two limit stops on either side of the guide stop.  Drilled first hole.  Loosened one limit stop and slid router assembly to allow block(cut to interval distance) to be temporarily inserted.  Tightened loose limit stop.  Removed block and moved other limit stop.  Drill and repeat.

Not the fastest approach, but accurate and used things I already had on hand.

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Peter

 

[Sparktrician]

Oooooo!!!  I like that idea, Peter!!!  Good on yer!!! 

[smile]

 

[Theshipstore]

Peter  Nice thinking great way to accomplish this task.  [thumbs up]

Sal

 

[GPowers]

Simple and clean solution.  [big grin]

 

[Bikeboy80]

Nice, I may have to try!

 

[MrToolJunkie]

Awesome!!! What a great solution without the lr32...might not be as fast, but certainly as accurate.

Scot

 

[ccarrolladams]

Peter and Everyone,

Surprisingly often I do need to drill shelf-pin holes not spaced 32mm on center.

If I could build my own equivalent of the LR 32 Guide Plate (cat 583 290) normally used on 'Holy Rails' I would have included a feature holding the locator pin in the retracted moveable position. However, that LR 32 Guide Plate works so effectively, instead of re-inventing it, when I need to use a different hole spacing, I substitute a non-drilled rail. Using an accurate  Follett drafting ruler with adjustable fingers, I pencil mark the rail where I need the holes in the line where the existing arrow of the cat 583 290 already indicates. The best part is the plate's locating pin does not erase those pencil lines.

At all times I keep several OF1010 set up on those guide plates, at least one with the normal Dowel Drill HW D 5mm drill bit with a brad point (the bottoming bit) cat 491 066. If I need to drill through holes, I reach for another OF1010 mounted on an LR 32 Guide Plate and fitted with the cat 491 064 spear-point 5mm bit.

 

[mouppe]

Nice! I was thinking that if you added the router edge guide you could have one less thing to worry about when lining up the guide rail and your holes would all be parallel with the edge.

 

[MrToolJunkie]

Richard,

Ooh, I like that idea!  It would ensure perfectly aligned holes parallel to the edge...

Scot

 

[Svar]

Peter's idea (spacer) and what Carroll is suggesting (ruler and pencil marks) accomplish different things.

With the spacer your intervals will be very consistent but the down side is systematic error propagation. For example, after drilling 20 holes in a row with 2” target interval chances are you’ll be off 40” mark.

Using ruler you’ll nail the overall length, but intervals will vary because you visually aligning your guide with the pencil mark every time.

 

[Carman]

I like how you can change the pattern size, very simple!  Nice tip!

 

[honeydoman]

Good idea Peter. For those who do not have the lr32 cuz it's less money to use and by lr32
Vs. your time at doing it this way
Bit it works

Peter I thought every day was a play day in your shop

 

[peter halle]

Good idea Peter. For those who do not have the lr32 cuz it's less money to use and by lr32
Vs. your time at doing it this way
Bit it works

Peter I thought every day was a play day in your shop

Everyday is playday in my shop!  The LR 32 setup is fabulous if you are drilling holes at 32 mm intervals.  But what if you only want to bore holes at 7 inch intervals?  This will never replace the LR 32 setup for speed in shelf pin situations, but it might be a possible solution in some circumstances.

Peter

 

[ccarrolladams]

Peter's idea (spacer) and what Carroll is suggesting (ruler and pencil marks) accomplish different things.

With the spacer your intervals will be very consistent but the down side is systematic error propagation. For example, after drilling 20 holes in a row with 2” target interval chances are you’ll be off 40” mark.

Using ruler you’ll nail the overall length, but intervals will vary because you visually aligning your guide with the pencil mark every time.

Apparently 'what we have here is communication failure'. Clearly I assumed FOG members had some background in drafting and/or mechanical drawing before we all turned to CAD. The Follett Ruler by MeasureMatic Inc. combines the function of a metric/Imperial ruler with sliding stops designed to divide a measurement into 1/2 or 1/3. Once you have set the length you want to divide, those stops stay put. So the system is constantly checking itself for accuracy.

I have been using the LR 32 Guide plate with non-drilled rails since 2006 when I needed non-32mm spacing. That is thousands of projects without any more alignment error that using Holy rails for 32mm spacing.

To those who doubt it is possible to consistently aligh an arrow with a pencil line, I answer that virtually everything we do in woodworking involves the transfer of measurements to wood with a pencil or knife line. If very early in our training we do not learn how to consistently deal with alignment and parallax error, we go into a different career.

Festools are designed and built to improve our chances of producing accurate and repeatable work. However, it is up to each of us to learn to not only operate our Festools, but to make appropriate use of design feature which are to our advantage.

In this case, the LR 32 guide plate not only has the retractable pin for normal use with a Holy Rail, it has the built-in arrow I use with the pencil marks.

Still, those who do not own the LR 32 guide plate made do as best they can.

But, when using another approach, please do not underestimate the utility of learning to consistently align with pencil lines.

 

[GPowers]

...  The Follett Ruler by MeasureMatic Inc. combines the function of a metric/Imperial ruler with sliding stops designed to divide a measurement into 1/2 or 1/3. Once you have set the length you want to divide, those stops stay put. So the system is constantly checking itself for accuracy.

It would be interesting to see a Follett Ruler by MeasureMatic Inc. All the web searches I did showed it is no longer in production and the name "Follett Ruler"  Is not owned by anyone? Looks like it has been several years.....

 

[tbellemare]

Here's one for about $20 delivered.

It looks like the company went under around '90.

Tom

 

[ccarrolladams]

Greg, Tom and All FOGgers,

The lack of new Follett Rulers in current production is likely a function of the transition from drawing boards, drafting machines and especially parallel rules which were so popular for large architectural drawings until about 10 years ago. I consider myself fortunate to still have not only a power lift Hamilton 48x96" board with a K&E rolling beam drafting machine for mechanical drawings as well as an articulated 56x36" architectural drawing board with a 48" parallel rule.

Although since the days of DEC workstations I have used various forms of CAD for most of my design work, and more recently Plan-It for cabinet design, I actually have fans willing to pay money for old-style architectural drawings I create by hand with the parallel rule and triangles. I admit I no longer use ruling pens, since the Rapidograph replaced those 55 years ago.[attachthumb=#]

I am fairly sure I purchased several Follett Rulers from Pasadena Artist Supply circa 1961 when I started designing large residences in the Pasadena area. My late wife Jean was the general contractor on those. I doubt any of my major conventional drafting equipment was purchased after 1975, although in 2010 I did buy a few brand-new triangles.

Tom, that was a marvelous find on e-bay, and such a deal. IIRC, when I bought my Follett Rulers new, they cost about USA$40 each, more for the longer ones. The divide by 2 were most popular. Somewhere I have an 18" divide by 3.

 

[tbellemare]

Those look cool, Carroll!

I still have quite a collection of old drafting tools also. For decades, my Engineer & Architect scales have been relegated to back scratchers. They work as well in that mode as they did as scales.  Somewhere, I think I still have my old Pickett slide rule...

I stopped doing things manually, (other than quick mark-ups while checking drawings), when Computervision was on green screens and haven't looked back. I much prefer CAD/CAM to manual methods. I still sketch stuff on paper sometimes for my own projects or to get a thought across but that's about it.

Tom

 

[RONWEN]

Memories!
  I started with a T-square then parallel bar, one-arm bandit, drafting machine, then CAD -- Computervision, Control Data, Pro-E, AutoCad then solid modeling -- Inventor, Pro-E solids and now I'm happy as pie with SolidWorks.
As far as numerical control I go clear back to the tab sequential (pre word-address) days of punching & fixing N/C tapes on a Friden Flexowriter.
Gee, what will the next 50 years bring???  [blink]

 

[GPowers]

Thanks Carroll, all this talk about T-Squares and parallel bars brings back memories of High School drafting class. Never used a Follett Rulers, must have been too high dollar at the time.