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

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.

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.

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 ££.

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.

Beautiful build by Starrett, sharp knurling, nice to use, strong indentation. Just a smidge too harsh to get to trigger (but I guess that's what an 18A would be for)

I've bought two types of starrett punches. One small and this one. The first was for soft metals. This one will happily mark stainless steel and mild steel enough to drill. The spring is quite stiff but if it wasn't you wouldn't get a decent punch. Well made and has been good so far.

Very good quality

I bought this over a year ago and was a bit frustrated that I couldn't get it to work. I found it in my drawer recently nd thought I'd have another look at it. There are a few you tube videos which show how to sand/ flatten the small piston so that if fires correctly (I used a bit of 320 sandpaper for mine as it looked like it had a little rust on it). Anyway it worked perfectly and has done ever since. The punch was oiled and wrapped from the factory so should have worked straight away. If you buy one (any one, not just this one) and are struggling to make it work search you tube for a fix. It is very easy to sort.