Heli coil for aluminum tooling arm

Justin.schmidt23

Active Member
So I'm building my own grinder well in the "figuring it out " stage. I'm gonna use 2 pieces of 2x2x.250 steel tubing held together with. 250 steel plates. It's alot like the lb1000. I see that alot of grinders use the aluminum tooling arms. I'm not a fan of aluminum because steel threads in soft aluminum equals huge headaches. So I was wondering if helicoils would work for the tooling arms.
BTW if I'm posting too much feel free to let me know:)
 
As long as you have enough "meat" around the hole that is pretty much the textbook definition of when to use helicoil.
 
As a long ago mechanic helicoils are for after threads go bad IMHO! OTOH I don't change out the tooling on my tools arms often enough to worry about stripping threads.

YMMV
 
As has already been stated, it'll work as long as there's enough "meat". :)

Personally I'm not a fan of anything aluminum on a grinder..... too soft, too light, and versus steel, a grinder made with aluminum has a lot more vibration, and often times a lot more chances of things stripping or going wrong. Several years ago I tried the aluminum tooling arm thing, simply because of how great everyone said it was...... I found it to be more trouble then its worth, and went back to steel tooling arms.
 
aluminum arms, tube arms, solid steel arms all will work if the fit well and can be secured in position. rather than helicoil, try hardened steel inserts. they are easy to install, wont strip out in normal use, since you buy in lots of 5, cheaper than helicoils.
 
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