Nerdy stuff

A customer emailed needing a way to make a custom thread for some optics, so after some thought I recommended thread milling. But I can't recommend something without trying it out, can I?


A 4 flute hand tap with 3 of the cutting edges ground off to make a one flute thread mill.


A hole produced by thread milling.

So my customer will save the $200 for a custom tap, after he does some headscratching of his own....

In other nerdy news, I installed SuSE linux earlier this week. I had no real reason, except that my old PC was being neglected. I need to reinstall though as it was a dual boot and windows isn't working well after the installation...also I can't log onto the linux box from XP...Linux may be free and cool, but it's more of a pain to setup networking, as you can see here than it was in Windows...at least for me, who knows nothing of the underlying mechanisms of either.
(not to be taken as an attack in Linux, which is neat and has lots of free software...)

Here is how to grind a drillbit for drilling plastic.

Here is my friendly local gun shop.