Thread: Reamers

Adjustables are fine for odd sizes (we have a few at work permanently set, 20.03, 12.01), but stick to solid reamers for standard sizes (whole numbers, imperial fractions).

I have various fixed reamers sizes but a few years ago CTC tools had HSS reamers on special and their shipping was not too expensive I bought a set of adjustable (6 mm to 33.5 mm) reamers and these are the ones I use ~95% of the time.

CTC no longer seem to sell sets but I priced up the same set and it came to US$107 which is quite reasonable compared to US$92 for Indian ebay carbon steel bladed reamers which I doubt are as good as the HSS CTC tools reamers. The OUCH point with CTC is their shipping - no shipping costs indicated for the Indian ebay ones.

The only thing that's happened to teh CTC reamers so far is I lost one of the blades on the 15.25 - 17mm reamer and the price of replacement reamer ended up being about double the price of the original. But I use this size a fair bit so I now have plenty of replacement blades.

Originally Posted by OxxAndBert

Adjustable reamers are great for the occasion where you're stuck without a particular size or when you need to take a smidgeon out of a bush that has shrunk when installed after you got the fit wrong, .....
...
I got a cheap set recently (possibly from Banggood) that I think were only about $20 for the main sizes from 3-12mm.

Steve

Thnks Steve how did you know that I get the size not-quite-right all the time?

Also, are your cheap, fixed-size items hand-reamers or for machine drive?
Freddie.

Originally Posted by Fast Freddie

Thnks Steve how did you know that I get the size not-quite-right all the time?

Also, are your cheap, fixed-size items hand-reamers or for machine drive?
Freddie.

They’re machine reamers.
Most of the time the hole that you’re reaming has just been made in a machine, so not much point in having to hand ream it.
Just chuck up a reamer - job done.
Within reason machine reamers will also remove more material if needed as they are end cutting rather than relying on a tapered lead in like hand reamers.

Steve

Chucking reamers every time for this retired tooly.Chucking reamer.jpg

Plenty of good advice here, but I would add adjustable reamers may have a place for the sizes which are fractionally larger or smaller than the normal nominal sizes. These can be required for a sliding fit or on the other hand an interference fit. While mostly we could adjust the male part dimension to provide the required clearance for the precision hole, there may be times when this is not possible or desirable, or a particular surface finish may be called for, hence the need for a reamer. While in the USA it seems relatively easy to get reamers in both undersize and oversize of the normal nominal sizes, and often reasonably priced as well, (although not as cheap as the Chinese reamers), I have not found any of the Asian reamers with the range that is obtainable in the US. I have heard of, but not tried myself, of people tweeking reamer sizes, up or down, by burnishing the cutting edges of a reamer with a suitably sized carbide rod, like the shank of an end mill. You would need to experiment a bit, and make some test pieces and try the result with the mating part or better still a plug gauge. The same would be the case in using an adjustable reamer also, make a test piece so you don't spoil the part. If using a hand reamer, you could always use a guide, just like the telescoping guides used when tapping, with the same setup used to generate the hole, be it a drill press or vertical mill, and as hand reamers have a much longer taper to lead the reamer than a chucking reamer has, with care you should get a pretty good hole, on size and without lobes.

The other alternative to adjustable reamers is to just buy ALL the sizes. We have a set at work (which I assume used to be complete, it's so old the phone number doesn't have the leading 9) of Titex spiral reamers from 0.97-8.10mm H7 in 0.01 increments which works out to...*mashes calculator buttons*...a lot of reamers (714 if my math is correct)

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