How to, small drill bit.

You can get PCB drills that have a 3.2mm shank for a dremmel, and then narrow down to sub-mm tips, quite brittle though ...

e.g

Thanks for that I wasnt aware of those.

Just wrap the drill shank in insulation tape and clamp the chuck down on that. It will be good enough for that job.

SteveW

I use a dremel pin chuck that goes down to 0.3mm.

Bill

You can also get a pin chuck or pin vice to take very small drill bits. Possibly the disadvantage they position the drill tip quite a way from the drill body that you are holding.

Small drills bits can break very easily when the drill is hand held and there is a sideways movement.

Example

or

Depending on how you can hold the workpiece there is also

for slow hand drilling

I once had an adapter for very small drill bits. Basically a manually operated threaded taper chuck with a parallel shank to fit in your drill chuck. Sadly one of the 4 jaws fractured which sent it to the bin:-(

I see Machine Mart do a pin vice set for very little money.

The tool-less dremel chuck I have (as an alternative to the collet chuck) doesn't go much below 1mm

I have a few of the drill bits and cant think there will be much use for them so can afford to break a few so will try a couple wrapped in tape first and see how that goes. If that fails having checked on ebay the next cheapest option will be buying a new buckle for the strap, but DIY is 1st priority.

Yes, it will. No need to overcomplicate things.

Cheers

Mine did that and I repaired it temporarily with a piece of spring steel with the ends bent into a loop. Only lasted about 3 years. ;-)

Mine was the hole in the side of the clasp had worn oversize so the spring pin would pass though.

I think I went for a 1.2 mm diameter long pin that had a slotted head and the other end was internally threaded to take a matching machine screw.

I just dressed the shank of the pin down slightly to the same width as the clasp and put the screw in with a tiny drop of Loctite.

It's been fine ever since. ;-)

As mentioned elsewhere I bought and used a 'pin drill' and that held the bit pretty well and it was very easy to take though by hand.

Cheers, T i m

wrap wire round the bit.

NT

Until one breaks off flush and you can't get it out ...

Be careful - once you get a hardened steel drill stuck in a job after snapping it is the devils own job to get it out again - depending exactly where it snaps but in this case my expectation would be almost flush with the surface of the workpiece.

Your problem is that handheld you will snap the drill as soon as it starts to cut. The small diameter drill can only really cope with cutting metal if it is running dead true and in a drill press.

You can get Dremel collets that go down that low.

That shouldnt be an issue as the current depth is only about 1mm and I want to take it to about 2mm. More likely to fall out than get stuck.

Fit one of the smaller sets of jaws that come with dremel type machines so it can grip the drill.

My cheap lidl one comes with five and will easily hold a 0.2mm drill with the smallest and take the bigger shaft sizes with the others.

Yes I used to have a set of thick shank tiny drills. I can confirm how breakable they are. You certainly need a good rigid drill platform to use them without breaking drills. Brian