Drilling out a wheel hub

Joined
Jun 24, 2022
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Hey, any thoughts on drilling out a wheel hub, super hardened steel. Special drill bit? grinding?
 
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Jan 16, 2011
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Vilvoorde / Flanders / Belgium
Normaly, the hub itself ain't ultra hard. It's the bearing races. And there, grinding is the only decent DIY solution.
If you have acces to a spark erosion machine, that's better of course.
 
Joined
Jun 24, 2022
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Yes, it is the bearings races I'm after, I just want to enlarge the hole (7/16 I think) to 1/2"
Thanks for the reply
 
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Mar 2, 2022
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Nottinghamshire. UK
Not that I've tried, but would a tungsten drill at slow rev and slow feed work? Would have to be dismantled in a lathe to stand a chance. If you don't have a lathe or a carbide drill forget the words of unproven wisdom.
 
Joined
Feb 7, 2008
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Nottinghamshire England
I tried to enlarge the hole in a bearing insert, drill and grinding stones , I didn't succeed.

However it did easily reduce the stones to dust ?

Paul
 
Joined
Jul 8, 2022
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94
Location
Sagle, Idaho USA
Hey, any thoughts on drilling out a wheel hub, super hardened steel. Special drill bit? grinding?
I read this thread a couple of weeks ago and ran across what you would refer to as "tough" steel in a rear hub of mine. I have a metal lathe, so I thought I'd try opening up the hole- I have a carbide boring bar and even that was having a hard time cutting into the hub steel. Then I heated it all up to a dull red and re- tried it in the lathe- this time it did start to make chips, but it was dulling the carbide tip on my cutter, so I stopped. If you are only going up from 7/16 to 1/2" then a sander disk in a dremmel tool is about as easy as it gets, although if you need the hole to be concentric to the outside diameter of the hub, you still need a lathe of some sort to spin the part while grinding. - be sure to cover all the surfaces of your lathe as grinder dust is very detrimental to machinery!
 
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