I have a micro mill but no lathe.How would i drill and tap Ti rod with the least risk of breaking bits?Thanks :)

Carefully, and with a lubricant. :) The biggest problems are the drill speed and locating the center of the rod. If your mill won't go slow enough, you might want to do this on your drill press. Using a good cutting fluid will greatly decrease your chances of breaking a drill bit.

Use a spotting drill to start the hole and just eyeball the center. There are devices which will help you locate the center and they will work on the drill press or the mill but they are only as good as the person using them. For a thumb stud, it really won't matter if you are 10 or 15 thou off and with practice you can be much closer than that.

As for tapping, use a cutting or tapping fluid, do it by hand, and use any one of the various tapping devices available to hold the tap vertical and steady. HF has Hand Tappers on sale right now for $40 and MSC has Piloted Tap devices that work in your drill press for even less money ........

Thanks Ray!
My little micro mill is variable from 0-2500.What speed would you reccomend for a #48?I recieved the HF hand tapper yesterday,quite cool,heavy and solid but the collets seem a little cheap,not to mention rusty :( If i used a three chuck rotary table will it hold the rod perfectly verticle? :confused:

The problem with the little DC motors is that they don't usually have a lot of torque at slow speeds so running at 250 rpms could be a problem but that's the speed I like.

Glad that hand tapper looks like it will work out. Rust comes off and hopefully even a cheap collet will do the job.

A rotary table properly set up should do very well. In fact, you can use it to help find the center of the rod. Put a spotting drill in the mill or drill press and bring it down to touch the center (your best guess) of the rod. Crank the rotary table so that it rotates and let the drill scribe the surface of the rod. When it scribes a dot instead of a circle you have found the center.......

:cool: