drill/mills

[Rocketmachinist]

I like the idea of drill/mills. I like how they can drill, spot face and all that fun stuff. The problem that I have been having is they love to explode on me in simple drilling operations. Can't figure out why. I'm not running super fast and not high feeds. Does anybody have any suggestions to help prevent this problem?

[Mr. M]

What kind of material are you drilling?

[chris m]

Drill holes with drills, man; that's the best suggestion that I can give you. I use Melin drill / mills all of the time for spotting, chamfer milling, and some countersinking, but I would NEVER drill a hole with one [not like I have a lot of call for 1/4 or 3/16 holes anyway]. Flute geometry and chip relief are just better with real drills.

 

C

[Sbarner]

Yes. We ran those in our shop as a multi function tool, and the same thing happened. We chalked it up to the chisel on the end of the drill being EXTREMELY small. Compare the ends on comparable spot drills and drill/mills. Notice the difference? Others in our shop chose to stick with drill mills for spotting, and had some success by using extremely small peck amounts to spot. IMHO, this is nuts. Not only did it take considerably longer to spot drill, the tools eventually broke anyway. I use them only for chamfering now. They kick butt for that.

[Rocketmachinist]

Yea, I've had only sucess with spotting and drilling in aluminum. I Love them for chamfering. I tried to spot in stainless and they just break away. Looks like I need to buy some good spot drills.

[doyleg]

The carbide spot/mills will not hold a tip in steel. They are great in aluminum though. Spot holes and chamfer with same tool.

[Programinator]

use the carbide ones for chamfering only. somtimes i will use it to side cut in aluminum or plastics. If your going to take full cuts like spotting or slotting then go with the hss ones. The only downside to that is i think the smallest hss ones are 1/4 inch. In carbide you can go as low as 1/16 which can be nice for chamfering close to walls. I love the little things and the operators love not having to deburr parts. Yeah no spotting with those things. They cant handle it. Just do a tool change and use a spot drill for a spot and a drill for a drilled hole.

[Jim at Gentex]

My Vo-Tech instructor always told us to never use a wrench when you need a hammer. I never forgot that.

 

Same applies here.

They are nice for spot drilling and chamfering, but like Chris said, if you need to drill a proper hole, use a drill.