This is a long shot but does anyone know of a hole punch I could chuck up in the spindle?
My use case is punching holes in thin plastic sheets and eventually thin leather. The thin plastic tends to melt and/or tear easily, so a punch leaves the cleanest holes.
I’m thinking maybe something like a spring loaded center punch but with a die at the business end.
I couldn’t find anything with a quick search but it seems like this is a thing that would exist 
I think the issue would be to extract the “hanging chads” at any kind of speed. That’s what would cause an ordinary punch to fail. I would set it up on a vacuum table to let a shop vac do the work.
Vacuum table is definitely on the todo list now that I’ve got a vacuum pump. The hanging chads shouldn’t be too terrible with very consistent materials like plastics.
I feel like the fibers in paper are what make it more likely.
Have a look at grommet kits. I got one on Amazon a few years ago and they come with hole punches. Not sure if you can chuck it up but might be a cheap give it a try option
That’s a great idea. Also an awesome idea to try just for the plastic in general.
I’m working with layers of ~0.1mm diffusion plastic and reinforcing the hole edges sounds like it’s worth a shot.
Thanks for the great idea 
Are you looking for something like this?
They won’t fit in the machine.
Questions? Why the use in the machine? Spacing? Speed? Don’t want to do it manually?
Also what size hole is needed?
Bernd
While not suited to the machine perhaps:
Yeah something like those.
Most often size would be something like 5mm diameter.
The machine would be ideal for accuracy mostly. When stacking up several layers of plastic sheet, it’s easy to get ripple if the alignment isn’t perfect. Realistically I’ll just oversize the holes to account for it but if there was some solution out there it was worth asking about 
What I may do is use a pcb drill to spot the holes and rig up a punch with a center locating pin to just finish them by hand. Since it’s just locating, the pcb drill edge finish won’t matter. (Assuming it doesn’t tear but their sharpness and small diameter makes that seem less likely)
@WillAdams that might be nice for the thin metal work but for the plastic it seems finicky. Lining up the bottom and top edges is always just a little annoying.
look for cork borer
This is out of a chemistry lab (I’m a chemistry professor by day job)
I can’t seem to find a picture of the old school electric cork borer (basically a mini drill press with a sharpened hollow tube.
Plenty of the manual style on Amazon, though you might have to cut the ears off.
They come in a variety of diameters.
I do have a set of hollow punches I got to adjust to add an extra hole on leather belts. Those work quite well. I think this is the one Amazon.com: OWDEN Professional 6Pcs. Leather Hollow Punch Set. Size: 1.0-5.0mm for Belt, Watch Band and Strap Gasket. with a Free mini Cutting mat. There is also a type of leather punch that is like a set of pliers with a wheel of different punch sizes, but I haven’t used that
How many of these holes do you need to make? Just a few get, a punch.
John
Oh cork borers may just do the trick. Thanks for the pointer there. I imagine they’ll also come in real handy for cork 
I am not sure how many I’ll be making for now. Getting into some custom lighting fixtures and if they do well, I might try to productionize the process. Things are promising when doing it by hand so it might actually be worth the effort to get all the parts cut on one machine.
I’ll chime in with the results of the cork borers 
In that case perhaps:
Now that’s a thing of beauty.
Imagine one of those attached to the z carriage with a bit of spring to ensure the core of the tool is always ejected. I bet we’d sell dozens of them 
How do you come across all these strange hyper specific fit for purpose tools anyway? Like an encyclopedia of hand tools.
Did bookbinding when I was younger, among many other crafts, and spent a lot of time trying to find every possible thing which could be used in a project.
Also subscribed to the Cool Tools mailing list Kevin Kelly ran (which seems to still be a thing):
and which also became a book:
Mostly it’s just a matter of living a decently long while (as my kids relentlessly point out, I’m old) and trying to learn stuff and paying attention and having a decently good memory.
Small tangent to the post, here’s some output from the highly diffused light panel i put together
The lightning is diffused enough that my arm doesn’t cast a shadow. I need to make a few smaller ones for the work shop. This one puts out about 10,000 lumens after diffusion. I wanted it to run about 6000 lumens which puts the LEDs at 60% power via pwm (20,000 hertz so there’s no flicker whatsoever)
Dimmer is a slider pot since I though it would be more fun to interact with than a more traditional rotary
I’ll make a post about the details if/when I get around to making one on the machine. Or maybe I’ll do a small write up when I make a couple 8”x8” lights for the shop…maybe this weekend
Post for anyone interested in the analog LEDs in more detail. I’ve gotten a lot better since posting that but the basics are the same
