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Hi everyone,

Is there a favorite drill bit for making a flat hole in which to place magnets?

We have been using the magnets which are about 2-3mm in diameter. And, pretty sure we are doing things the hard way when we are using either "hacking" with an Xacto to carve out a hole -- or using conventional tapered-tip drill bits.

What's annoying is that with either method, we remove way more material than we need to.

[Also wondering if rather than using these "large" magnets the preference is to use those even smaller ones?]

Any thoughts much appreciated. The younger one of us really wants to magnetize Tau -- and not seeing how to do this without a better method....

Do you have a dremel or a drill (hand or electric)? If so just find the size of the magnetic and goto your local hardware store and pickup a drill bit...

usually places sell standard measurements, but some places have metric (usually used for taps and dies). So if you want metric and you don't see it by the regular drill bits, check by the taps and dies. My local hardware store sells metric sizes by Irwin.

Good luck!

I have always used a regular drill bit and found it worked fine.

The ledge formed between side of drill and the tip is a good seat for a magnet, also when gluing down the magnet the space below the magnet gets filled with glue anyway.

My personal view is that it's too much of a hassle to make a perfectly flat hole.

I just use normal drill bits. The ones that came with my pin vice are smaller then the 2mm magnets I mostly use, but the small bits in the set I picked up for my cordless drill years ago from sears work just fine. The bit for 2mm fits into my pin vice, but the 3mm is a little bit to big for the collets, I need to break out a larger drill for them.

If you are worried about the slight angle at the bottom of the hole, you can drop a tiny ball of greenstuff down there to fill it up. Or use a more gel-like glue. I’ve found that the magnets fit tight enough to the sides of the hole that I don’t need to bother with anything fancy. Just a quick brush of thin glue, push the magnet in, and wait.

I use one of these:

 bubber wrote:
I use one of these:

That drill bit is for wood just a fyi ;p but hey, if it works, it works!

It works just fine in resin & plastic.