Snapped off screw extractor!

[Edward]

This left me scratching my head!

So I used a screw extractor to remove a stuck stud.

How do you remove it if the screw extractor has snapped off and you can’t grab it with plyers?

You can’t drill it because it’s harder than the drill bit.

Topic

[Lorrin Barth]

If the stud is protruding, not broken off, double nut it.

[Chris]

If you have access and an arc welder stick an electrode to it? Or stick something like another piece of tool steel to it with epoxy or crazy glue? Tips it over and shake it 🙂

[Walt jr]

You need to center punch it just enough to get a mark big enough to follow it up with a tiny grinding stone or diamond bit, once you have a small hole you will need to weld a bolt to it and back it out. Sometimes the steel is brittle enough that it will break off from just using the center punch.

[Edward]

What I was taking off snapped below the surface so double nut or spot welding wouldn’t have worked. The threads turned out to be two different types and the part I was taking off was sacrificial (which I knew before I risked forcing it).

So now it’s not really important, it a what if question really.

What if I really needed to get the broken extractor out? I still don’t know how I would have managed.

I think is just one of those engineering nightmare scenarios.

Can anything drill out an extractor?

[Glenn]

Once upon a time I drilled one out with a dremmel tool and a bunch of attachments like the following. It took a good while though.

Attachments:

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