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TAPS & THREADING
CLICK TO VIEW TAEGUTEC THREAD MAKING
Talk to us about resharpening your HSS & carbide taps, did you know it is economical from M16 upwards!!
CLICK HERE TO VIEW OUR "Recoil Screw Thread Inserts" PAGE
CLICK HERE TO VIEW OUR "Thread Restorers / Thread Files" PAGE
There is an enormous range of taps available at Miller’s Tooling.
Metric Coarse & Fine, UNC, UNF, BSW, BA, BSPT(Rc), BSPF(G), NPT,
Cycle threads, B.S.Brass just to name a few, even Left Hand or custom made taps are easy to source from us.
Quality brands of taps include:
“Walter – Prototyp” Taps
“Walter – Titex” Taps & drills
“Dormer” Taps & cutting tools
“Goliath” Taps
“Sutton” Taps & cutting tools
“Capital” Taps & cutting tools
“P & N” Taps
“China” economical taps & cutting tools
HAND TAPS
Hand taps can come in “carbon – alloy steel”, a cheap, one off 
type.
The more reliable & suitable for serious engineering is High Speed Steel (HSS) taps. Hand tap sets contain x 3 taps; taper (starting), intermediate & bottoming (plug) taps. Using all 3 taps in series, tapping by hand, produces the tapped hole. Most tap sets or individual taps are stocked at Miller’s Tooling Pty Ltd.
Not as common, in Australia, are the European hand taps known as a “serial tap set”. These are a series of hand taps with a profile similar to ACME thread, the taper tap is of a minimal diameter, inter tap has a slightly larger diameter, and then the bottoming tap 
has a finishing diameter. These “serial taps” are also avail as well from Miller’s Tooling.
Drill / tap sets, tap & die sets as well as gun taps or spiral tap sets are avail in kits to suit most thread forms. We can tailor make sets for you.
The “combination drill-tapper” is handy for one quick operation mainly in sheet metal work.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE “GOLIATH” CATALOGUE
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD TECHNICAL INFORMATION
Walter-Prototyp & Walter-Titex are German world leaders in taps & have a huge range of machine taps avail, including solid carbide taps tapping up to 60RC hardened steels & thru. coolant taps. Long & extended length machine gun nose & spiral flute taps are readily avail.
CLICK HERE TO GO TO “ Walter - PROTOTYP & TITEX” TAPPING CATALOGUES.
Machine taps are offered with coloured banding to denote what material it is best suited for. Prototyp & Titex has:
Green banded shanks best suited for all steels etc
Blue banded shanks best suited for stainless steel & tool steels
Yellow banded shanks best suited for aluminium
White banded shanks best suited for cast irons
GUN NOSE TAPS
Gun nose taps are a ground machine tap best suited for “through holes” as gun taps push the swarf thru the hole. This reduces friction & heat of swarf binding on its way out therefore being a very strong tap. Gun taps can be used easily in lieu of hand taps, as the gun tap has an intermediate starting lead, only one tap is required & no backing off the gun tap is required, just keep the tap moving in a forward direction.
Best suited for tapping in lathes, drills & mills, a tapping head is the ideal scenario with auto reverse & clutch to prevent breakage. Most taps run at about 5 m/min however better quality Walter – Titex & Walter – Prototyp taps can run about 13 m/min or even up to 45m/min for their powder-metal “sprint” taps in steels.
SPIRAL FLUTE TAPS
Spiral taps are also machine taps suited for lathes, drills & mills. The spiral flute tap is best suited for “blind holes”.
The spiral flute & ground cutting edges creates the swarf to come back out the hole in controlled spiral swarf (like pigtails), this swarf evacuation allows no clogging & breakage of taps in the hole.
Walter – Titex & Walter – Prototyp can offer “sprint spiral flute taps” for high speed production tapping as well as Synchronised or non - Synchronised taps for appropriate feed rates on CNC machines.
COLDFORM or ROLLFORM / FLUTELESS TAPS
Cold form taps (roll form taps) or (flute less taps) are all the same; HSS taps which actually cold form or forges the thread into a hole. Some “coldform” taps do have oil grooves in them to allow coolant into the hole, looking like flutes in the tap.
The finished tapped hole created by coldforming is a lot stronger than traditional cut tapped holes, due to material being pushed up, almost work hardened edges and no material has been removed. Coldform tapping is used mainly in a production environment for better quality threads, faster produced & higher tool life. The material being “formed” must be around 70% ductility. Aluminium is a great example.
NOTE: A larger tapping size drill is required for cold tapping, as material is forged rather than cut.
ORBITAL THREAD MILLING
The method of “orbital thread milling” is becoming very popular in Australia nowadays to cut threads in production very quickly, usually in just one pass in & out. Thread milling is using a solid carbide cutter looking & used like an endmill with fluted serrations and actually milling in a CNC machine centre to machine threaded holes, small as M1.6mm & much larger. For larger threads indexable threading inserts can be used.
Thread milling requires simple programming on a CNC machine centre to correspond with the pitch of the thread. Feeding & ramping in the threadmill cutter downwards the Z axis to one pitch, then ramping out to the centre of hole once depth has been reached, then exit the threadmill cutter vertically up.
TAP WRENCHES
T bar tap wrenches (both ratchet tap wrench & plain T tap wrenches) are stocked at Miller’s Tooling. We have a large collection of bar type tap wrenches & die stocks on the shelf.
CLICK HERE for our range of tapping chucks & tapping heads, also our large range of thread go/no go & plug gauges on this website.
Tapping fluids such as "Rapid Tap" tapping fluid or "Tapmagic" tapping fluid or heavier concentrated coolants (aprox. 10%) should be applied to all tapping applications. Rapidtap paste is also handy, it is like a grease compound to stay on a job or tap.
Types of taps available from Miller’s Tooling Pty Ltd
HAND TAPS
BOTTOMING TAPS
INTERMEDIATE TAPS
TAPER TAPS
MACHINE TAPS
GUN NOSE TAPS
(SPIRAL POINT)
SPIRAL FLUTE TAPS
LEFT HAND TAPS
OVER SIZED TAPS
NUT TAPS
FLUTELESS TAPS
DIN STANDARD TAPS
DRILL TAPS
CARBON TAPS
UNC TAPS
UNF TAPS
UNS TAPS
BSW TAPS
BSF TAPS
BSB TAPS
BA TAPS
BSP PARALLEL TAPS
BSPT TAPER TAPS
NPS AND NPSF TAPS
NPT AND NPTF TAPS
BSC TAPS
TRAPEZOIDAL TAPS
ACME TAPS
PG TAPS
TAP SETS
