Drill holes using a template

Drilling holes is boring.
;-)

That's supposed to be a joke. Get it? Drilling is boring. The words "drill" and "bore" are synonyms. Uh... yeah.

Seriously folks, drilling holes can be tedious, especially for projects demanding a large number of holes; i.e a whole bunch of holes.

I think the worst part of this hole drilling business, besides the bad puns, is doing all the measurements that determine where the holes should go, plus marking these measurements on the work piece, etc.

But what if there were a way to do most of the measuring in one step? E.g. put the measurements on a piece of paper, and then transfer those measurements directly to the piece.

Well, that's essentially what this instructable is all about.

By the way, the example work-pieces in which I'm drilling holes are some pieces of aluminum channel that I think used to be part of a Venetian window shade, in their former life. These pieces are intended to serve as heat sinks for some hot little LEDs. Maybe you'll see them again in another instructable of mine.

However, the particular shape of these pieces of metal and the pattern of the holes is not important to this instructable.

This instructable is intended to illustrate the general principle of transferring marks on a piece of paper, onto marks on a piece of metal, upon which holes can be drilled.

Step 1 Tools and Materials

paperworking tools:
paper
pencil
straight edge ruler
eraser
scissors
single-hole hole punch

hole driling tools:
spring loaded center punch
small drill press, drill bits, etc

other:
masking tape

Comments

[Lateral Thinker]

MAYBE CHECK OUT > http://sketchup.google.com/ < in 2D mode?

Edges and Faces: Thats all there is to itPencil

Every SketchUp model is made up of just two things: edges and faces. Edges are straight lines, and faces are the 2D shapes that are created when several edges form a flat loop. For example, a rectangular face is bound by four edges that are connected together at right angles. To build models in SketchUp, you draw edges and faces using a few simple tools that you can learn in a small amount of time. It's as simple as that.
Push/Pull: Quickly go from 2D to 3D push/pull

Extrude any flat surface into a three-dimensional form with SketchUp's patented Push/Pull tool. Just click to start extruding, move your mouse, and click again to stop. You can Push/Pull a rectangle into a box. Or draw the outline of a staircase and Push/Pull it into 3D. Want to make a window? Push/Pull a hole through your wall. SketchUp is known for being easy to use, and Push/Pull is the reason why.
Accurate measurements: Work with precision Tape measure

SketchUp is great for working fast and loose in 3D, but it's more than just a fancy electronic pencil. Because you're working on a computer, everything you create in SketchUp has a precise dimension. When you're ready, you can build models that are as accurate as you need them to be. If you want, you can print scaled views of your model, and if you have SketchUp Pro, you can even export your geometry into other programs like AutoCAD and 3ds MAX.
Follow Me: Create complex extrusions and lathed forms Follow Me

You use SketchUp's innovative, do-everything Follow Me tool to create 3D forms by extruding 2D surfaces along predetermined paths. Model a bent pipe by extruding a circle along an L-shaped line. Create a bottle by drawing half of its outline, then using Follow Me to sweep it around a circle. You can even use Follow Me to round off (fillet) edges on things like handrails, furniture and electronic gadgets.

[jeff-o]

Another great way to mark out the dill points is laying them out in Illustrator or a CAD program. Then just print out the pattern (100% scale, of course!) and proceed as described above. The great part about this method is that if you happen to destroy your template you can just print another one that's exactly the same.

[Jack A Lopez]

That's a damn good idea! Like you say it would definitely facilitate storing templates resurrecting them later. However I think I've still got some learning to do wrt drawing programs. In the past I've done a lot of drawing with MS Paint, but uh... I'm beginning to realize that's nothing to brag about. I mean I've made a lot of drawings in the past using crayons too! I think I can get OpenOffice Draw to do the trick. It claims to be a vector drawing program, with the ability to print to scale. I'll report back to this comment section if I learn anything.

[jeff-o]

Any decent vector drawing program will give you X,Y coordinates of the cursor, making it easy to simply draw a crosshair where you want the hole to be. You can also group points together and copy and paste them, if you have a few sets to lay out.

[Jack A Lopez]

Success! I managed to create and print-to-scale a template using OpenOffice Draw. This template, and the original, are shown in the pic below.

[jeff-o]

Perfect! Looks great!

[glorybe]

Instead of a hole punch you need a tiny point such as a scriber or even an ice pick. The idea being that in order to be accurate you want to transfer a tiny mark. Then use a punch to form a dimple and drill with a small bit before bringing the hole to a final size. When finished on any piece that has a number of holes in a line you can check with a straight edge to see if the top and bottom edges of the holes are in a perfect line.

[Grassone]

interesting, thanx