Drilling and Reaming

Drilling and Reaming

Drilling and reaming operations

Drilling operation

Drilling is used to drill a round blind or through hole in a solid material. If the hole is larger than ~30 mm, its a good idea to drill a smaller pilot hole before core drilling the final one. For holes larger than ~50 mm, three-step drilling is recommended; v Core drilling is used to increase the diameter of an existing hole; v Step drilling is used to drill a stepped (multi-diameter) hole in a solid material;

Counterboring provides a stepped hole again but with flat and perpendicular relative to hole axis face. The hole is used to seat internal hexagonal bolt heads;

Countersinking is similar to counterboring, except that the step is conical for flat head screws:

Reaming provides a better tolerance and surface finish to an initially drilled hole. Reaming slightly increases the hole diameter. The tool is called reamer;

Center drilling is used to drill a starting hole to precisely define the location for subsequent drilling. The tool is called center drill. A center drill has a thick shaft and very short flutes. It is therefore very stiff and will not walk as the hole is getting started;

Gun drilling is a specific operation to drill holes with very large length-to-diameter ratio up to L/D ~300. There are several modifications of this operation but in all cases cutting fluid is delivered directly to the cutting zone internally through the drill to cool and lubricate the cutting edges, and to remove the chips (see Section 5.6 Cutting Fluids);

Drills and Reamers

Reamer

Twist drill

The twist drill does most of the cutting with the tip of the bit. It has two flutes to carry the chips up from the cutting edges to the top of the hole where they are cast off. The standard drill geometry

The typical helix angle of a general purpose twist drill is 18~30 degree, while the point angle (which equals two times the major cutting edge angle, see page 101) for the same drill is 118deg.

Some standard drill types are,

straight shank: this type has a cylindrical shank and is held in a chuck;

taper shank: his type is held directly in the drilling machine spindle.

Reamers

The reamer has similar geometry. The difference in geometry between a reamer and a twist drill are:

The reamer contains four to eight straight or helical flutes, respectively cutting edges.

The tip is very short and does not contain any cutting edges.