Mechanical Design Guide

Mechanical_Design_Guide

Slides as a pdf here .

The slides above have been transcribed from the first few pages of a TI Design Guide.  This mechanical Design Guide is an old friend, but for years, I could not read the small print without a magnifier.  I left my original copy with the company, but eventually purchased the one shown in the banner from ebay.

Although at work, I used a drill index with #1 - #60 sizes , it was many years before I bought a set for home.   I mostly used the drill bits that came with my variable speed hand drill.  It came with 13 bits in a  white plastic clam-shell box.  The sizes are labeled with characters molded into the plastic.  Quite unreadable.  Only recently have I taken time to make the paper labels shown above, with a note for the nearest machine screw diameters.

A very sensible approach these days would be to buy an inexpensive set of #1-60 bits, and replace a worn bit with a higher quality, more expensive bit, as needed.

A set of #61-80 drill bits can be useful to make very small holes, in a PC board for example.  The bit is held in a pin vise and turned by hand.