?? Micro drilling stainless steel QUESTION??

[mochinist]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Rustybolt:
Tiny drills are made for drilling very thin materials.The next questiion would be; how do you center them? Almost any center drill is going to have a chisel point that is going to leave a flat an the bottom. No matter what the material you don't dare dwell at the bottom of the hole or the drill will instantly dull.You have to be careful of the coolant used so as not to accumulate chips and pack the hole and thus break the drill.
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Thanks for the lesson, now let me give you one. Center drills are for making centers in a part that needs to be held on a live or dead center. Spot drills are for centering your hole before you drill it. Here is some miniture spot drills that I have used in the past, http://www.harveytool.com/products/product_detail.php ?product_id=11400&category_id=1&product_family=Min iature+Spot+Drills
I looked at the spot these make under a microscope and they hardly make a flat at all. I would make sure my part is indicated in nice and flat, and then set the spot drill to go in .002", that way the top of the hole would have a nice small chamfer.

As for not dwelling at the bottom of the hole, all I can say is duh. I also use the same coolant whether or not I drill .015" holes on the cnc or drilling 1" holes, I just set it to take such small pecks that chip packing isn't an issue.

As for the other stuff you said, yeah small drills aren't usually made for going that deep, and to be honest I would turn down that job if anyone ever brought it in to my shop.

[This message has been edited by mochinist (edited 08-17-2001).]

[Rustybolt]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by mochinist:
Thanks for the lesson, now let me give you one. Center drills are for making centers in a part that needs to be held on a live or dead center. Spot drills are for centering your hole before you drill it. Here is some miniture spot drills that I have used in the past, http://www.harveytool.com/products/p...re+Spot+Drills
I looked at the spot these make under a microscope and they hardly make a flat at all. I would make sure my part is indicated in nice and flat, and then set the spot drill to go in .002", that way the top of the hole would have a nice small chamfer.

As for not dwelling at the bottom of the hole, all I can say is duh. I also use the same coolant whether or not I drill .015" holes on the cnc or drilling 1" holes, I just set it to take such small pecks that chip packing isn't an issue.

As for the other stuff you said, yeah small drills aren't usually made for going that deep, and to be honest I would turn down that job if anyone ever brought it in to my shop.

[This message has been edited by mochinist (edited 08-17-2001).]</font>

This was/is intended to help solve Yankees problem not get in a pissing match.
You're welcome for the lesson. I've drilled a lot of holes in a lot of different materials, I'm sure you have too.

[mochinist]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Rustybolt:
This was/is intended to help solve Yankees problem not get in a pissing match.
You're welcome for the lesson. I've drilled a lot of holes in a lot of different materials, I'm sure you have too.

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I can piss farther than you

[YankeeMetallic]

I am designing a specialty burner tip for a glass blowing torch. It is going to require drilling over ONE HUNDRED .003" & .004" holes .25 deep within a .850" diameter Stainless Steel face, in a special pattern. I will be producing 100 tips which equates to over 10,000 holes total. My plan right now is to experiment with the different SS steels to see which ones resist warping at temperature. My hope is that 416 annealed SS will work because of it's machinability, with 303 SU or 303 SE as backup materials.
My question is, from someone else's experience would micro carbide drills break too easy, or would Cobalt drills be better because they are less brittle? Obviously I don't want to be spending mucho $ on the drills to be breaking them, or having to spend mucho time resharpening them due to drilling so many holes in the stainless.
Has anybody ever used a drill/reamer combo in this micro size that would be the ticket?
I have found Carbide reamer-drills for stainless but nothing smaller that 1/16".
Any help out there? Thank you in advance.

[AZSORT]

There are outfits that specialize in perforated steel sheets. You can specify whatever patern you want and they can do quantity jobs very reasonably. A laser process I assume.

[SGW]

The first thing I'd suggest is to figure out a way to drastically reduce the hole depth. Anything over about 3X the drill diameter gets to be "deep hole drilling," and you're proposing to go 60X to 80X.

[Rustybolt]

Basically you want to drill a hole the thicknesss of a human hair, a 1/4 of an inch deep. Not really the material or thickness for such small drills. I bet this would be a perfect application for a laser or a water jet if they have orifices that small.

[mochinist]

Are you planning on doing this on a manual machine, or a cnc? Also if you can resharpen .003" drill, let me bow down to you now, my eyes are pretty good and I have a steady hand, but I think I would toss a .003"drill before I would attempt sharpening it.

[YankeeMetallic]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by mochinist:
Are you planning on doing this on a manual machine?</font>

Yep. Manual LAGUN with a Bison SuperSpacer and a DRO for bolt patterns. I will make the outer ring pattern first. Then program the next smaller diameter and reduced number of holes. Of course I would drill all parts with one specific bolt pattern, then reduce the diameter & pattern and drill the others, lather, rinse, repeat.
I haven't figured out the sharpening of the .003" drills yet though.

[topct]

"It is going to require drilling over ONE HUNDRED .003" & .004" holes .25 deep within a .850" diameter Stainless Steel face, in a special pattern."

Forget it.

I would back up and think about this situation.

What about a piece of micro fine screen. Can be had in stainless?

[This message has been edited by topct (edited 03-03-2006).]