Drilling & Boring

Learn how to achieve good chip control when drilling with indexable drills. Effective chip control is the most important factor in indexable insert drilling operations and is essential for quality hole making. Poor chip evacuation can result in poor surface finish and can lead to tool breakage and damaged components.

Sunnen Products Co., St. Louis, acquired BTA Heller Inc., a U.S.-based manufacturer of deep-hole tooling and systems for primary hole generation.

With a new re-engineered design, the Seco Perfomax indexable insert drill delivers higher drilling parameters and longer tool life as well as exceptional chip control and evacuation.

One of the challenges when boring workpiece materials susceptible to workhardening is recognizing whether the prebored hole is already workhardened.

J.M. Sales-USA, Troy, Mich., is the representative in North America for Swiss Tool Systems AG, Bürglen, Switzerland, a modular boring system provider.

The structural steel industry is bracing for – and counting on – a huge increase in demand for structural steel products. The anticipated surge in demand arises from a renewed focus on improving the country's infrastructure, as well as a high level of private sector construction. Manufacturers are investing in machinery that enables them to increase part production speed. This emerging metalcutting trend is supported by a variety of new tools, including the structural steel GEN3SYS XT holder and insert system and T-A structural steel drilling system made by Allied Machine & Engineering.

For the 10th episode of The CNC Chef, Bob Warfield of the CNCCookbook discusses the challenges presented when drilling deep holes. Among them: clearing the chips, getting coolant down deep, and holding tolerances on position, diameter and surface finish. As Warfield observes in this episode, "all of this means we need to use some special strategies whenever we have to go more than 5 diameters deep, and that's what this video is all about."

There were a lot of deep discussions about holemaking at UNISIG's recent open house and seminar series for magazine editors. UNISIG engineers explained different methods of deep-hole drilling, including gundrilling and BTA drilling, and provided an overview of the machines and related systems the company builds to perform these operations. Hands-on demonstrations in UNISIG's 62,000-sq.-ft. plant augmented the classroom discussions.

Drilling has long been the cornerstone of the machining process, consuming roughly 50 percent of all tools and creating 75 percent of all chips. So it comes as no surprise that shops interested in reducing costs and increasing productivity should look first toward the full optimization of their holemaking processes with today's advanced solid-carbide and indexable-insert drill technologies.

In connection with my canvassing efforts to best focus the boring tools topic scheduled for the January issue of Cutting Tool Engineering, I spoke with Harvey Patterson, product development engineer at Scientific Cutting Tools Inc., Simi Valley, Calif.

Chamfers and countersinks help control burr formation, improve thread starts, and protect hole quality. This guide explains where each operation fits and how tooling choices affect results.

Walter has unveiled the Walter Cut G1221-P, an innovative grooving boring bar with precision cooling, for recessing and internal grooving. This monoblock boring bar has two coolant holes.