T Drill

Matt_21

for 4-5 years now. never had any problems with the joints. saves alot on tees especially on larger pipe. make sure you follow the directions about preheating the pipe & using the blue grease they give you. we had to replace some heads because the guys were getting lazy about preheating the pipe.

bigwilly104

T-Drill

Are there any T drill users out there. I am thinking of using one in a upcoming mechanicle room. My biggest concern is weakening the copper by streching it like that. Also the lap that is left to braze is so small.

bigwilly104

demo video

On the site didnt show the pipe being preheated. But that makes sense. I cant see copper moving like that just for the fun of it unless it was hot or soft copper.

hot_rod

I've never heard the pre-heat part?

the lube definitaly helps and the tool does heat the copper as it pulls. The copper will get soft as you silphos the joint.

I've noticed a lot of refrigeration coil tubes are soldered without a pulled joint, just a drilled hole.

The T-drill joint has passed a lot of listing tests and been around a long time.

hot rod

A.J.

just purshased one

We just bought one to use on a small comerical job. I pulled from 1" to 1 1/2" on a three inch run and it was really slick. I figured to save $1000 in that boiler room alone not including labor. The only thing is that it is a bit pricy so you better be sitting down whrn you get the price. The braze joints heald up just fine, we used a copper braze rod by lennox to try to match the copper, followed by a scotchbright pad and some Mothers mag polish on the headers we fabbed at the shop.

Rich Kontny_5

Excellent Tool

We started using a manual T-Drill in the late 80's. As I went to different firms I talked two of them to purchase the complete drill kit that pulled up to 2" branches off of up to 4" copper pipe.

You do need to preheat the surface of the larger size copper pipes especially if it is type "L" copper. Otherwise you put a great deal of strain on the machine.

Pre-made manifolds that are purchased from Uponor etc use this technique for their branches. T-Drill I believe is from Finland and is used a great deal by mechanical contractors.

This is a proven method for running copper quickly and putting tees exactly where you want them. The silver soldering requires more heat especially on the larger size main lines but any competant solderer can master silver soldering.

I consider this a superior system to Pro-Press as the branches are clipped and dimpled to avoid flow disturbance. It does, however require a flame and proper training.

Rich Kontny

Make Peace our Passion while supporting our troops!

Rich Kontny_5

Go to....

T-Drill.com and you will find a wealth of information about this tool. It has been around for over thirty years as the site explains.The last two that I was involved with were the T-60 models.

Rich K.

Jon L.

T-Drill

Not knowing what this tool was, I did a Google search and in the process found a couple of T-Dill products currently listed on ebay.
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=T-Drill&category0=

Josh_10

I believe that pre-heating is only required for branches 2" or larger or 3" or larger for the header.