18C Automatic Centre Punch Heavy-Duty With Adjustable Stroke, 5-1/4" Length, 11/16" Diameter

I bought two of these from Amazon warehouse at a very good price. I found that both punches failed to trigger despite pushing with considerable force, obviously the reason they were returned! Amazon warehouse clearly doesn’t “fix” or test them! They arrived in original but re sealed Starrett packaging. So I was happy they are genuine Starrett products. Being Starrett they are obviously very well machined to high tolerances from high quality materials, so the problem is with the main spring. The design allows for adjustment of the “trigger” pressure by screwing the cap in or out. At maximum (softest) adjustment only one would “fire”. I disassembled them checked all the components were present and measured the spring lengths. Both springs were very stiff and too long for the contained length when unconfined. New springs which had never been compressed. Using water pump pliers (parallel jaws) I gently compressed the springs by around the designed length of travel (cap length) and released, 3 times. This conditions the spring to the required travel. I reassembled both punches and voila! Both work perfectly. A simple fix. Time to unpack, assess and fix less than 10min. Clearly given the number of customer complaints around their automatic punches on Amazon Starrett, despite being one of the premier tool brands, are failing to factory condition their spring punches. 😠 So, it appears that it is pot luck whether a new punch works strait out the box so you might as well try an Amazon warehouse one, if needed it’s a very simple fix and save ££.

Giving it 5 stars because it's great at that it's designed to do and is of great build quality. Speeds up the making of screw holes very much over more manual tools. In my personal case of needing such a tool for internal, mostly wood screws, it's overkill -- too powerful and therefore a little bit difficult to use... you need to exert quite a bit of power to get it to punch the hole. A lighter unit would be more suitable for household DIY but I was just starting out and obviously couldn't try out the product beforehand but none of this is to fault the product itself in any way.

Well made and powerful - needs a strong push to activate but the indentation produced is good. Much more controllable and accurate than a hammer and punch.

Very good quality

Good , but bit hard to push down sometimes

This is quite a chunky, automatic punch and produces a heavy blow, resulting in a large indentation. Probably more useful to a fabricator than a precision machinist, but it's a great item to have in your pocket if you're working on fabrications, or working on site.

This is a very solid well made product. However it was not what I wanted. I was only able to trigger the punch with difficulty using both hands. It fires with some force going 5mm deep into wood. Its probably ideal if you want to drill into a RSJ and only nee accuracy to 2mm or so. For precision on small projects it is not ideal.

1 star because I couldn’t rate it as 1 only did 2 days work

Buen producto. Quizás un poco duro para marcar en chapas de poco espesor, ya que la presión que hay que hacer puede doblar la chapa si no se hace con cuidado o se apoya sobre una superficie firme. Para el resto funciona perfectamente.

Excellent quality, hard to press but leaves a solid mark on anything!

Ok

Is de beste die ik al gehad hebt tegen mijn andere

I am super happy with this product. Solid and sturdy. I have been using it for a few weeks and did not have any issues yet. The heaviest use was for a project where I had to do punches for 170 holes. It worked great. My only remark is that the spring mechanism seems quite hard and you need to put quite some pressure to get the automatic punch. But I understand that it is supposed to be like this. I used gloves, took some breaks and finished my project.