Any lathe experts around

Anyone around that can stop by and tell me what I’m doing wrong? Bought a new piece of equipment for drilling pen blanks. Not working the way it should. I’m clearly not doing something correct. Reverting to old method until I figure it out.

Got it figured out.

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OK, inquiring minds want to know (not to bust your chops, but to learn from it). Anything you’re willing to share?

I bought me one of these pen drilling chucks and a drill chuck. Got it all mounted and started to drill my first blank and I couldn’t get that thing to drill to save my life. Posted this OP and reverted to my first tool. Life was good.

Got the blanks on the mandrel and started to turn them and my tool was jumping all around. This ain’t right. Thought for a minute, looked down, said to myself, “you idiot, you’re in reverse.”

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Anyone that says it hasn’t happened to them on at least one tool is lying. On the plus side, you’ll never have it in reverse again :smiley:

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Years ago the company where I work was sponsering a high school in the First robotics competition.

It was after hours and I was walking out to our machine shop, one of our technicians was standing by the robot frame while one of our most senior engineers was drilling a hole through 1/4 aluminum angle. He was struggling a little and when I looked at the bit I could see it was turning backwards.

I motioned the technician into a nearby lab room and asked him why he didn’t tell him the drill was running backwards.

He said he was just a technician, what authority did he have to tell our chief scientist he was doing it wrong.

So we stepped back out of the room and watched a few more minutes, then I continued on my mission, chuckling the whole way. I’ll never forget that incident.

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