Originally Posted by
rustlererad3
That should have said the ID of something and not idea
Also I have drilled out and tapped hardened steel before but it was prolly only 35 not 50 like these pinion gears are I realize pinion gears aren't the most expensive part in the world but it's the bottom line of I know it can be done I just thought maybe someone other than myself might ponder it and have some suggestions on how to do it
I also had the thought of using a boring bar on a HMC to bore it out but that still leaves the issue of turning the threads into the new hole
Another reason why I want to do this...I'm an engineer and I love a challenge
Well it certainly appears as though you have access to the right tooling, but that still doesn't mean that you can pull this one off successfully. Did you ever stop to think that with something this small that the machine work might need to be done prior to the hardening process? You obviously can't go back in time and un-harden the gear, so maybe it is just one of those things that is beyond the capability of the tooling you have at your disposal. Could something out there exist that could do what you want? Probably, but at what cost? You have to remember, you're not working for Skunkworks, you're playing with a toy car.
By the way, a good engineer would be aware of all this. One that is going to school at Penn State, and has a summer internship at a machine shop might have a difficult time understanding that in engineering, just because you can redesign something, doesn't mean you have too. Here in the real world you have profit margin. If one set screw works, why spend the extra money to have 2?