Does your shop treat drilling like a primary process or an afterthought? You may think that if you’re planning to ream or bore holes to their finished diameter, then maybe it doesn’t matter if you take some shortcuts, use an old toolholder and don’t pay much attention to the results. But those shortcuts come at a price, as shortcuts often do.
Think about what you lose when you “just drill” and don’t make drilling a real priority. Drilling typically forms the last step in a production process, so you really can’t afford to scrap hours or even days of work on a high-value part just because you oversized a hole or broke a tap in it. All of these problems are preventable when you use a better approach, and that’s where powRgrip® toolholding can step in to shorten and improve your drilling operations.
In manufacturing, tool life is money. If you load a drill – even a high-quality tool – into a worn, damaged or lower-quality toolholder, the drill’s wedge, or center point, tends to walk away from where you’re drilling. The runout from that subpar toolholder may give you inconsistent metal contact on each corner. Tighten up your TIR and your tolerances, and the drill runs absolutely true – which can double your drill life and reduce your tool expenditures.
Drill manufacturers will tell you what happens when you drill without proper toolholding.
- A drill that moves from side to side never engages properly.
- Once the drill embeds, it follows its initial entry, not where it actually needs to go.
- A poorly engaged drill produces a stepped hole.
All of these symptoms point to a drill that’s fighting to create a proper outcome – and losing. To make matters worse, long drills magnify these problems, especially in the 7xD or greater size range. With rock-solid toolholding, you may even be able to eliminate the need for a pilot hole with long drills.
And not all holes are created equal, partially because some of them aren’t actually round.
- Unequal chip loads on different parts of the tool create an oval-shaped hole.
- The finish in that hole will require a reamer to true it up.
- Switching to a smaller drill leaves more material behind for a reamer to round out.
- Over correcting an oval hole creates one that’s too large.
You can skip the out-of-kilter results, workarounds and secondary processes if you start out with high-quality toolholding.
Depending on your workpiece material, an off-kilter drill – or one that’s sharper on one side than on the other because of irregular wear – can make a real mess. In fact, it can cause damage severe enough that you’ll be forced to throw money away on scrapped parts. For example, if you’re drilling a composite with that worn tool and its sharp side isn’t actually engaged, your tool creates cuts and swirls inside the hole, frays the edges and causes largely invisible voids that can trigger part failures, especially in applications that subject the part to temperature extremes.
To eliminate these and other problems, you need two things: a high-quality drill and equally high-quality toolholding. The REGO-FIX powRgrip system can improve drilling, eliminate secondary processes and avoid costly scrap, but many shops don’t think of powRgrip when they look at drilling applications.
What do you gain on your drilling applications with powRgrip as your toolholding system?
- Superlative accuracy produces holes so true that you may be able to streamline your production process.
- Your drill holds tolerance on its own, so you can leave your reamer in the tool rack.
- Expand your coolant options – even without a through-coolant tool.
- Force coolant directly down the sides of the tool.
When you improve your drilling results, you also improve your productivity. Eliminate secondary processes – and even preliminary steps, such as the need for pilot holes – and you reclaim valuable production time. Those savings truly add up, especially on long part runs.
Now is the time to consider using powRgrip for your drilling operations, especially if you value your productivity, because powRgrip can boost it immensely – and eliminate the stress of uncertain drilling results. As important as it can be to take a budget-conscious approach to shop expenditures, powRgrip can show you that when you invest a little bit more up front, you reduce your total costs, improve your processes – and gain the results you really want.