Modifying Socket Head Cap Screws

[rossbotics]

A couple of posts back I submitted a tool called a V-Step Angle Plate, there were three clamps made especially for holding work to different places on the plate for grinding, there are a series of 1/4-20 holes tapped throughout the plate for attaching the three clamps, the clamps have 1/4” slots milled into them for making adjustments, I originally used 1/4” socket head cap screws for the slots which was ok but I soon found out that the heads on the screws were a little too small for me, I didn’t want to put washers under the heads of the screws so I decided to take 5/16” socket head cap screws and turn them down to 1/4" and rethread them, but holding the screws by their heads in the chuck limited me how far back I could machine them without running the cutting tools into the chuck, I wanted to turn them down all the way back to the head of the screws and machine cut the threads all the way as well, the only thing I could think was to cut the bend off of a 1/4" allen wrench and chuck up the allen wrench and let the wrench drive the screws while I did my machining, probably nothing new I’m sure but worked for me, but in the same token I destroyed a perfectly good allen wrench, oh well

I have included some photos of the machining process

As always thanks for looking and happy machining

Doug