I bought the Milwaukee Rivet Gun before starting my build...I'm way more than pleased with it.  I did have a bit of a learning curve...there is a small ball bearing secured in each nose piece with an O-ring.  That ball bearing puts pressure on the rivet stem to prevent the rivet from falling out of the nose piece; however, when the rivet is pulled, the rivet stem stays in the barrel/neck of the rivet gun.  When I would insert another rivet, sometimes the stem of the newly inserted rivet would jam against the previously captured rivet stem.  I would have to take the barrel/neck off the gun and remove the jam...not difficult, but frustrating.  The solution was to remove the o-ring and ball bearing...after doing that, the rivet gun has been trouble free pulling thousands of rivets:

A pneumatic rivet puller is a bit faster...but, as far as I'm concerned, not having to listen to a compressor cycling on and off...and not having to drag an air hose around my work area far outweighs the minor decrease in pull speed.

I machined the Milwaukee nose pieces using an SE-5 Carbide Bur.  I didn't have any issue with the nose pieces being too hard to machine...the carbide bur cut the material without any problem.

The nose pieces for the manual rivet puller in the picture (DeWalt Swivel Head) are NOT interchangeable with the Milwaukee M12 rivet gun.

Question:  Does the M12 pull rivets slightly slower or "more gently" than a pneumatic rivet gun?

The reason I ask, is that I have the typical pneumatic rivet gun that Zenith sells.  It worked great, but one day I was riveting a piece of aluminum that had been powder coated.  The rivet holes were drilled after the powder coat process, so of course that broke the seal of the powder coat.  When I started to pull rivets with the pneumatic gun, I noticed a ring of blistered-up powder coat around each pulled rivet!  My theory is that the pneumatic gun pulls the rivets so quickly, it creates a tiny blast of compressed air around the rivet head as the "domed" or rounded head is formed.  This tries to escape through the broken seal of the powder coat, lifting up the powder coat.

Of course, the obvious solution for me was to pull the remaining rivets with a manual rivet puller and I had no further problems.  Just wondered if the pulling action is a little slower or more deliberate on the M12? This might also prevent some of the little "smilies"/dents/dings that can result if the pneumatic puller recoils and bounces off the surface around the rivet.

John

N750A

A little late to the thread, but in case anyone is looking for Milwaukee nose pieces that do not have the retention cavity I discovered these replacement pieces after finding out the hard way the retention noses should not be machined.  I have not ordered or tried them out, but they appear to not have the retention cavity so there shouldn't be any issues machining them.  Here are the part #'s, I was able to find them on greatlakespowertools.com.

48-98-0005 --> 3/32"

48-98-0010 --> 1/8"

48-98-0015 --> 5/32"

48-98-0020 --> 3/16"