Small Drill Alum

[Bill Sutton@Accurate Machine]

We have not done a whole lot of small driling in Alum. We inherited a job which has 400 .010 hole thru a .060 wall. This will be done on 50 parts.

 

We also inhertited there drills. Drill Bit City(never heard of them) No tech help on site.

 

Need recommendations for Speeds and Feeds .

Pecking of how much etc.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

Bill

[[email protected]]

quote:

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Drill Bit City

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LOL. Sounds like a shady deal already

[cadman2112]

http://www1.mscdirect.com/CGI/NNSRIT?PMPXNO=4759353&PMT4NO=0

 

1 peck as fast as you can spin it.

 

Make SURE it is running true

[ReDEyZZ]

quote:

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Need recommendations for Speeds and Feeds .

Pecking of how much etc.

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optimal speed would be in the 50,000 rpm range,(go max speed of machine for sure) use flood coolant, .0005" per rev start point....mabey less, .005" peck, not full retract though.

[35K chipper]

ok here is what i use for a 0.0150 carbide circuit board drill in 6061 t6 35000rpm at 8.3 imp 0.0040 peck that's only 137.43 sfm at 0.0002 per rev. i will drill 2000 holes and toss the drill. hope this helps.

 

35k

[Odell]

Small holes in allum. cam sometimes be a little tricky. You are drilling a hole @ 6 X D. which can get you into trouble. One of the best tools I have found for this is from a company called Harvey Tools. Tool#20100. It's a micro grain carbide mini drill. It should do you fine job without pecking (just be sure to keep the R's up).They also come @ a good price too.

[Thoob]

6XD isn't much for a twist drill. I wouldn't worry about that. I used to make vacuum chucks and we did just that. Repetitive .01 dia holes. We used to drill through thicker than .06 too. We had to go through 1/4 thick 6061. I only had a limit of 15000 RPM so I ran it at that with .0004/rev and .01 pecks, not full retract. I believe there was about 40 holes per c/bore and 6 c/bores so 200 holes per part and the drill ran fine. Problem is I don't remember what type bit we used Just make sure the drill is running true, otherwise it will break.

[chris m]

cadman, you're running a .0098 SPI drill 6XD in one shot successfully? That seems totally insane to me, but I am always interested to learn!

 

.0004IPR seems like a lot of feedrate to me for such a small drill; are you sure about that?

[Thoob]

**EDIT**

Nope. Not sure. lol.

 

[ 11-23-2009, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: Thoob ]

[Thoob]

whoops. Nope I was wrong, just checked the program. It was only 3 ipm so about .0002/rev. My bad. Sorry.

[chris m]

That sounds better. Thanks for checking, it is always good for me to learn new things

 

C

[John Crist]

Watch the coolant spray does not bend the drill. Drilled some .008 holes a while back and the coolant would break the drill if directed at bit.