How Do You Remove a Broken Tap?

[GordMay]

3 Simple Steps For Removing Broken Taps using a Tap Extractor:
Walton Tap extractors how to use, sets, individual extractors , parts and fingers

[Celestialsailor]

Gord...You are a wealth of information...Thanks

[Blue Stocking]

Have seen the tap extractors used in combination with freezing the area with a CO2 extinguisher, In some materials shrinkage creates larger clearances. No joke!!
SAVE IT GUYS

[donradcliffe]

The low tech solution that worked for me was two guys with hammers and sharpened punches, tapping simultaneously on opposite sides of the broken piece to turn it so it backed out. Its definitely not a one man job, as tapping on one side just jams it.

[delmarrey]

Originally Posted by Lodesman

Drill the centre of the tap and use a screw extractor.

Good luck!

Taps are made of HighSpeed steel. They are harder then files and will not anneal. They have to be extracted with a tap extractor (3 or 4 flute), burned out with an EDM or broken up into little pieces and removed bit by bit.

If it were aluminum/bronze you could eat it out with nitric acid.

A lesson learned! SS is a bitch to tap with the wrong tools and requires special cutting oils.

It'll take someone with experience to get it out w/o damaging the existing hole.

It all comes down to how and why it broke in the first place to a method of extracing it.

good luck!

Your local Machinist. ................................._/)

[stevensc]

If there is room, stick the two points of a needle nose pliers or some other hard rod down into the quadrants between the cutting edges of the tap stick a srewdriver between the pliers jaws and turn it out with LOTS of back and forth strokes apply lubricating not cutting oil.
tell them next time they tap to use a short handle, and short strokes again as much or more backing as forward stroke
I'll bet they had a crescent wrench on it!!
Good luck,

[Lawrence]

Good luck trying to drill out a broken tap. I have had sucess with a product called Tap Out. It is a mixture of acids, one of which is nitric, that disolve carbon steel and leave the surrounding aluminium unmarked. I have had sucess using it in aluminium which is what it was originally designed for. I removed several 5/8in broken head studs from my aluminium engine block by building a putty dam around the hole and filling it with acid. When the fizzing stopped I would replace it with new acid. It took several days but at the end the hole was so clean I did not have to run a tap down it. I have had sucess with a broken bolt in bronze. I am not sure if the acid will react with stainless; maybe it depends on the grade? When I bought the product in Los Angeles about 10 years ago it was about $70 a quart and worth every penny!
If you can not find out if it would affect stainless, let me know and I could run a test on some 316 or 304. Good luck

[karlhead]

What I have always done is this. Buy the smallest cold chisel you can. Sharpen it VERY SLOWLY on a grinder until sharp. Then smack it very hard with a good sized hammer, centered of the piece to be removed. You should now have scored a decent line on the tap and be able to unscrew by tapping with a small screwdriver at the end of the scored line. If that doesn't work use the corner of the cold chisel and try to shatter a side of of the stuck tap. If that doesnt work get a bigger hammer and try again.

[amynie]

Anyone knows how to remove the broken bolts sizes 48mm? does the broken tap remover machien works?

Amy

[Zai]

To remove a broken tap from stainless steel use a oxygen/acetalyn torch and burn it out. The stainless will not melt and the tap will. I have done this many times. It is worse when the tap breaks off in a steel part.

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, Amy.

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by amynie

Anyone knows how to remove the broken bolts sizes 48mm? does the broken tap remover machien works?

Amy

Hi Amy,

Lots of tricks you can try to remove a broken bolt. The best one to use will depend on how the bolt is broken, what material (stainless bolt in aluminum, steel bolt in steel, or what?) if there is any part sticking out, how much access you have to the bolt and especially how stuck it is in the hole. A lot of the techniques listed for removing a broken tap will work for a broken bolt.

One I would not try is using an EZ Out. I'm guessing you are not in the US so may not know that brand name. An EZ Out looks like a tapered drill bit with reversed threads. You drill a hole in the broken bolt and twist in the EZ Out. Since the threads are reversed, you twist the EZ Out counter clockwise and in theory that removes the bolt. In practice what usually happens is the EZ Out breaks and you have a worse problem.

Maybe give us more details on the broken bolt and we can suggest the best trick to try.

[colemj]

48mm is a very large bolt. Keel bolt? If it is broken in fiberglass or other similar medium, you may be able to grind back or cut out enough to expose the bolt and get a grip on it.

Mark

[amynie]

Maybe you could have a try with the portable edm machine, but I don't know the the size of your broken tap, if the size is no larger than 50M, the portable edm could do your help.

Amy

[rgesner]

If a tap extractor and the other methods here fail or are not possible, I have successfully drilled out a carbide tap with diamond dental bits. Slowly and carefully and it went thru a few bits, but it worked.