Harbor Freight tools thread.

Probably too late, but I encourage people looking for drill presses to search locally used. Often people think they will use a drill press more than they actually do so you can find some in good condition at a decent price. I bought a bench and floor drill press this way and got some great deals.

 

Yup, too late haha

So the guy I'm making parts for has 4 of the same bike (him, his two brothers, and his dad all own the same one), so he wants 4x relay harnesses, 4x diode harnesses (to convert to LED's), and 4x license plate brackets. I made the stuff for myself originally and posted a few youtube videos about it and folks have wanted to buy it.

Rad, I think, great way to spend a few hours to make some scratch and he wants four of everything. Easy money. So I bought it Saturday, got to work making some of the wiring components the guy ordered from me, and when I was almost finished with those and about to make the license plate brackets, he texts me and says he's just going to cut up to the stock LPB and cancels that part of the order. The part I specifically bought the drill press for



Oh well, now I have a shiny new drill press that I still haven't used but the rest of the order paid for

 

Just move on. People's lives can get complicated.

Been there, got the t-shirts...actually lots of tshirts.

 

Oh I didn't lose an ounce of sleep over it. Still basically got a drill press for about 3 and a half hours of wiring and $15 in parts. Wasn't a half bad saturday afternoon.

 

You could always look for a more robust used drill press and return the HF one if you locate something, keep it if you don’t.

 

I would have paid that much for a backpack if it fit a 17" laptop, as well as the tools. This would have saved me from carrying a briefcase as well as a backpack when visiting my clients.
I have a 15" laptop now an a $40 backpack and check my tool bag on my flights now.

 

The backpack is cheap compared to college textbooks that could go into it...

 

The college textbook authors and professors are bigger douchebag criminals than that dude walking out the door with them. Long before my University days in the early 80's, text books have been criminally expensive with the way so many of the Prof's mandating either their own book or some other insanely priced text and they'd edit them quite often making so many worthless on the book buy-back or used market. So much about college these days is a pathetic joke when it comes to fees and requirements versus the quality of your education. It was bad back in my time, it's a million times worse today. I'd never send my kid to most of the schools. Not unless it was a trade school with vocational experience. I won't say anymore as I might spontaneously explode.

 

Catching up on the thread, thought I'd provide some feedback, even though most of these are replies to ancient posts...

Hall-effect clamp meters are tricky. I've had great luck with these, and they're cheap -- less than $50:

AC-DC Current Digital Clamp-Meter - 100A 6000-Counts Low Impedance Voltage 1 mA Reading Auto Range Multimeter Tester with Temperature,True RMS (Red)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MX3PTBW

I'd say it's usable for detecting down to ~10 mA (it reads to 1 mA but fluctuates). But you have to know how to use it. It basically detects DC magnetic fields, which result from current flowing in the wire, but which also result from anything else slightly magnetic such as a car body or whatever makes compasses work. It is very sensitive to changes in magnetic field, but it doesn't know whether the magnetic field is coming from the wire or anything else. So you have to very carefully zero it, without bumping or moving it. It won't work if you move it or hold it in your hand. Also, if there are metal things moving nearby, or other nearby wires with time-varying currents, they will affect the reading too. So don't plan on anywhere near this precision in the engine bay with the engine running. But if you can get it stabilized on the wire and zero it without moving it, it works for detecting small changes in parasitic currents. Note that I said changes. It can't give you an absolute reading just from clamping on. To detect a parasitic load, you will still need to disconnect the battery lead, to get a proper "zero" value. Then it will tell you the correct value. Mine works perfectly.

You are correct that modern electronics have filters to reduce the effect of noise, harmonics, spikes, etc. from the mains. And in a pinch, most things will work just fine on modified square waves or other lousy power sources.

But there are a couple reasons why this is "hard" on electronics. The first is that doing so will tend to reduce the lifetime of the filter components. Capacitors and inductors work to "smooth" the power, by storing energy in electric and magnetic fields, respectively, to resist abrupt changes in voltages and currents. But, when fed for example with a square wave, the currents these devices carry to smooth out the power increases dramatically. How much depends on the specific circuit and components, but in general, these components will get a lot hotter. And heat causes the components to fail faster. The most common failure is with the electrolytic capacitors, since they rely on a bit of chemistry, their lifetime can be dramatically reduced at higher temperatures (a typical rule of thumb is that a 10C increase reduces the lifetime by half!) Transformers and inductors can also fail, due either to overheating, or mechanical issues -- the obnoxious buzzing noise you hear when running on modified square wave power is caused by parts literally vibrating, due to the wildly varying fields. Some power supplies will suffer severely reduced lifetimes, or fail within hours, whereas others will be only slightly affected. But unless you know the specifics of each device, fridge, computer, etc., connected to your generator, pure sinewave power is a safer bet for most applications.

The second main risk to electronics in these situations is that, although modern power supplies are designed to provide smooth power, a little bit of the noise will still get through. How much again depends on the specific circuitry. I could be 1% or 0.00001%. But will the remaining noise cause a glitch? Again, it depends. Most things are pretty robust and it won't matter. But some things are susceptible, and for consumer electronics, it's hard to know how much the reliability will be reduced.

That is why sine wave is favored over square or modified-square for most electronics applications. A lot of things will work fine either way, but the lifetime and reliability are both reduced.

I know you already pulled the trigger, but for those shopping for drill presses for metal work, the most critical thing you need from the press itself is a slow spindle speed. My benchtop drill press has a minimum spindle speed of like 600 RPM, which quickly dulls my bits in steel. It was clearly designed for woodworking, so it sees little use in my shop. Drilling 10mm holes in steel, I'd use the milling machine at maybe 200 RPM. That's a lot slower than a production machine shop would use, but I'm not a professional, and this is what works for my tools. The spindle in an economy benchtop press is far too flimsy to drill steel at production speeds.

Also you're going to need some good drill bits, which so far I haven't encountered at HFT. I got their cobalt master set a few years ago for work, only to discover that most bits needed to be ground out of the box, especially for starting a hole. Perhaps their quality has improved since then, but in my experience, US made drill bits are worth the extra cost. Although for the job you described, a step drill is going to be far better. Guess you don't need it either way, but enjoy the new press!

I agree that textbooks are an absolute racket, but the folks I know who've written them have done so out of a passion for teaching and developing their own approaches to the material over years of experience. Maybe also to pad their CVs, but the motivation isn't money. The royalties are pretty paltry, if they wanted to make the big bucks their time would be better spent consulting or starting companies. This is in the physical sciences, not sure about other fields.

I don't know why textbooks cost so damn much, and it's ridiculous. I probably dropped a thousand dollars on my first semester's textbooks when I started school. Then I made friends with classmates from India and Pakistan, they would buy me the "international" (newsprint) versions back home for like $5.

 

Has anyone used the 0.035 flux core welding wire?

 

I'm going to this weekend. It's been sitting there for years though.

 

I found that I get better welds using a roll of Lincoln wire from HD.

 

That’s what I’ve been using, guess I’ll stick with it. Thanks!

 

I also used the HF wire which came with the machine and when I needed a new one HF was sold out. So i bought the Lincoln one at Lowes, which was even cheaper and I also had the feeling that it works better.

 

I received an email that an item I was previously browsing was now at a lower price, bastards. And in the same email with the sale this weekend, the 5 drawer tool chests are also on sale for $200 but of course the color I want isn't at my local store but I can order it. They always are looking to take my money

 

Just picked up a corner clamp and some c clamps.

 

If its been out of the plastic for that amount of time you may as well throw it in the trash.

 

Browsing at the local HF, bought this gauge for the gas grill.

 

I have the black brand of welders from harbor freight. When I ran out of the wire that came with it, I switched to the spool you posted, and it was way better then the included wire.
I have never used Lincoln or name brands.