Gallery, Projects and General > The Design Shop

Drilling stainless steel

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Lew_Merrick_PE:
Hi Mick,

The nickel in stainless steel makes it gummy.  Cobalt drill materials are a good starting point.  Short cutting edges (135° to 150° included angles) give you a (short) leg up.  You actually want a scraping edge rather than a chisel edge to help break up the swarf.  The edges should be well stoned and look crisp & clean even under a 20X loupe.  I find that Tapmatic Gold works the best as a cutting fluid.

I most normally drill much larger holes in 316/304 materials.  Insert spade carbide does the trick in those conditions -- but even then I stone all the edges dead smooth and apply Tapmatic Gold in liberal quantities.  My other trick is to mount the piece being drilled in a water jacket and pump ice water through it to draw the heat away.  I know of people who swear by using dry ice chilled alcohol instead of ice water, but I have not tried that myself.  I know that liquid nitrogen freezing of S/S parts is done in places such as Sandia Labs.

Hopefully this helps you out...

Dawai:
Friend, if you have younger eyes.. you can get away with a loupe. (hand held magnifier). print out them pictures in the post offered above, look at the end of the drill.  I don't have a microscope - camera hooked up at the moment either.

I used to lightly turn it on my thumb, if you can feel it digging in, it will cut.
Stoning the edge to make it perfect and remove the false ragged edge is great too.

It is amazing looking at things in a loupe in bright light.. I could see.. (SEE) lil balls of flesh in curled tips on the old tattoo needles.. New needles were blunt, old used needles sharper, but the tips rolled over into fish hooks.. when I had younger eyes.

I'd get so angry to resharpen a drill and it be throwing a great curl from the hole, only to find out one side took it off on a tangent off center..  You have to look at them real good to see the differences.

krv3000:
hi well ther is drill bits out ther made for stanles steel mine are made by dormer

Bangkok Mick:
Thanks for all the feed back guys, armed with this information I may be producing nice S/S pens yet.

Cheers Mick

evildrome:
I spent some years drilling & boring 316 stainless. I once bought a Titex 7mm solid carbide drill with thru coolant.
A thing of true beauty. It lasted about 2 seconds. The front edges disintegrated immediately.

What worked best for me in the end was Dormer HSCO drills and lots of neat cutting oil.

Cheers,

 Wilson.

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