That looked a very interesting item in your mill. Unfortunately, due to age and the racket going on in the background, I could not really make out what you were saying.
Were you describing the holder or just chatting about it?
Sorry Pete, don't worry, the commentary in my videos is normally just me prattling on about nothing in particular.
In this case an upcoming job at work (where we make electronics) is going to require 2400 holes drilled and tapped M3.
This turned out to be the kick in the pants I needed to hook up reverse on my mill spindle at home.
The spring loaded floating tap holder makes this very easy:
Feed the tap down at the thread pitch. In this case the spindle was running at 600RPM so I fed at 600 x 0.5mm = 300 mm/min.
Stop feeding and turn the spindle off. The tap continues to advance, pulling the head of the floating tool holder down against the spring while the spindle decelerates.
Start the spindle in reverse, ignore the spin up time and either rapid back up to the clearance height (as I did in this case) or, if the tapping depth is > the travel on the floating head, feed up at the tap pitch.
Stop the spindle and the slow down time is enough for the tap to flick up out of the hole.
Re the Mill.
I don't have many shots of the mill in it's finished CNC'd state, but the early work is here:
http://www.caswa.com/cncathome/X3.htmlPK