hi all, for christmas i got a dremel tool and i was wondering what you guys use them for?
Not much but when I need it, it’s the only thing that will do the job. Big jobs requiring removal of copius amounts of material. Recently I used it to deepen the slots for aftermarket exhausts on my mustang. I’ve removed resin pour stubs with it. I cut the nose off of a Tamiya stang years ago for a new engine. I use it most often for polishing clear parts. I cut stainless steel hypo tube with it too. Armor guys use them a lot for conversions and such. I’ve carved new pistol grips with it. I use one at work too, for all kinds of stuff. Usually removing broken bolts and carving small holes where nothing else will reach.
Eh? Why punch a gift horse in the mouth?
What DON’T I use it for should be the question. Drilling, sanding, poor-man’s lathe, grinding, gougins, buffing, polishing, cutoff wheeling…etc…etc…etc…
If you don’t have a use for it yet, trust me, you’ll invent some.
I use my dremel for everything. I love it with all my heart, its my best tool. I use it for sanding hard bits, for making bullet holes, damage, repairing damage, modding, scratch building. Fixing kitchen drawers and chairs, catching my hair and almost pulling it out, melting plastic on accident, scaring my cats, and a billion other uses.
I have the old plug in dremel. You know the one that spins at warp speed. I use it any time I need grinding, sanding, polishing, cutting. I have had it for 20 years and still going.
Ditto on the old plug in Dremel Mine has the little speed knob but it wasn’t a fine enough control. Two years ago I bought a foot pedal from Micromark for about $30 and it’s been a teriffic addition. I just used mine last night with a diamond wheel to clean up the instrument tunnel on my NF-104 (see parallel thread if you want to see the plane in progress.)
I have had the multi speed plug in job for years, and i use it all the time. I have never tried to use it on my model projects though? Seems like even at the lowest speed you could get in trouble really fast?
What kinda bits are you folks using, and for what?
Lots of things…beside cutting and grinding
Tapering in flush mounted lights…
Sanding PE as well as other parts where the mechanical advantage is faster.
POLISHING plastic and painted surfaces.
Stirring paint…only do this on the slowest of RPMs…preferrably with a cordless unit. Corded units tend to have too high a speed for most plastic working operations.
Also look to score yourself some dental burrs…the ones the dentists grind away in your mouth with…ask your dentist…many discard them after they are too worn for teeth, but still have life left for working with soft plastics.
Combining the foot pedal with a speed setting in the middle of the range on the dremel results in an rpm that is very very slow. You get outstanding control with the foot pedal and I highly recommend it.
I’m very glad to see thereviews of the corded Dremel and the footpedal. I have one and it has been very under-utilized due to thelack of speed control, but now I have a solution!
Forgot to ask, where do you get it and what model is it?
Thanks,
I got my footpedal from Micromark. Micromark.com
http://www.ares-server.com/Ares/Ares.asp?MerchantID=RET01229&Action=Catalog&Type=Product&ID=82412
I’m not sure that post is the correct web site so here’s the details from the Micromark site
|
FOOT OPERATED SPEED CONTROL, 1.2 AMPS MAX. |
|
Item Number: |
82412 |
|
List Price |
$34.50 |
|
Our Price |
$29.95 |
Everything. And not just within the scope of scale modeling.
With grinding bits, you can use it to grind plastic or resin (wear a dust mask, especially when grinding resin). With metal burr bits, you can shape plastic or resin parts, for example, hollowing out solid-cast aircraft engine exhast stacks.
With cutting disks, you can cut (duh!), removing pieces from sprues, removing resin parts from their casting blocks.
Start investing in attachments and accessories. With the Dremel drill press stand, you can mount drill bits and get nice straight and plumb drilled holes in a piece of work. With a tile-cutting bit and the collar attachment, you can cut bathroom tile.
With a grinding bit (looks like a drill bit), you can rout out rabbets in a piece of wood, or just remove material.
With diamond cutting wheels (cutting wheels coated with diamond dust), you can cut glass.
With the buffing wheels, you can polish. You can use the buffing wheels, with or without polishing compounds.
I’ve used my Dremel when replacing a wooden toilet seat, with brass fittings. The screw heads were too soft, and got stripped. I used cutting wheels to cut the fittings loose and remove the seat.
Check out MicroMark’s website for more rotary tool bits and attachments, but also, look at your neighborhood hardware store, chances are, they also carry Dremel tools, or other makers’ rotary tools, and all kinds of attachments and bits for them.
Regards
Brad
Mine came with buffing weels but they dont seem that soft and they strip up paint when i tested it. Do they sell softer polishing wheels?
Hmm…that doesn’t sound right. The buffing wheel shouldn’t remove paint, unless the paint hasn’t really bit into the primer coat or whatever other surface was under it. Mine never removes any surfacing, only shines it.
The buffing wheel looks like a thick little wheel made of cotton or felt. Are you sure you mounted that in the Dremel, and not a brush wheel? The brush wheel looks just like that, a brush, round, with a disk in the center and bristles mounted all around the edge. When mounted in the Dremel and applied to a surface, that could conceivably remove paint or some other surface treatment. But the buffing wheel should just polish the surface.