[TowerTalk] Grinding hole in thick steel plate?

Jim Thomson jim.thom at telus.net
Tue Sep 8 13:52:39 EDT 2015


Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2015 18:33:22 +0000
From: Rich Hallman - N7TR <rich at n7tr.com>
To: "towertalk at contesting.com" <towertalk at contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Grinding hole in thick steel plate?

I had a ? inch steel plate made up that will be used to retrofit a HDX589 base foundation to a HDX572 base.   After giving both bases to the machine shop and asking them to make sure all of the holes are exactly the same location as the base, some of the holes are 1/8 to ? inch off.   I had a major issue with this machine shop so I will not take it back for now.

I wanted to see what others have done to grind out holes in thick steel plate.

I was looking at the Carbide Burr bits and getting a ? inch burr bit to see if that would grid enough from the hole so it would then fit the bases.

The holes are pretty close....so I thought grinding them out would be the best solution for now.

Any thoughts?

Thanks....Rich

##  heres a thought, don’t pay for the work done.   Id be just pissed.   What kind of a bs run machine shop is that ? 
ideally they should pay for a new plate, and this time get the holes lined up correctly.   Even if you do re-drill it,
being .125 off might well cause some slop between the two mating plates, unless you have a LOT of torque
on those nuts.   

Jim   VE7RF



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