Thread: Drill bit for spring steel

Hi Pulpo,

The best option I could suggest would be to use a cobolt drill. I have used them for drilling out things like grub screws and roll pins. There are titanium coated drills on the market also but I have not had any experience with these. You don't usually find cobolt drills in the usual hardware stores. You would most likely need to go to someone like Blackwoods ,a bearing company or someone who sells to the various trades. Hope this is of some help.

Cheers,

Mike

Pulpo

Artu drills should be the go. Will drill through a file.

Ken

My local Bunnings has Sutton Cobalt drill bits.

Cobalt (Cobolt?) drills would be my guess & Bunnings does stock them.

Probably pay to use some sort of cutting fluid also.

Read somewhere about spot annealing hard steels to enable drilling. The example given was grinding flat the end of a nail or similar and chucking it in the drill. "Drilling" with the nail where the hole is to end up would generate a lot of heat in that spot which upon cooling would have annealed just that localised area enabling subsequent drilling with a conventional HSS drill. The material in the example was a hacksaw blade.

Not sure if this is of the slightest use to you but some modification of this method may be useful.

I used to work for a bank & the keys were locked in the main safe once. A fella from Chubb used a drill on a magnetic base to drill through the safe door in a specific spot, I seem to recall him using a couple of carbide tipped drills that he was alternating between sharpening on a grinder and using in the drill. Unsure of the tip geometry in this case tho'.

At some farming field days they have a mob demoing these super drill bits, not sure if they're the Artu drills Toggy mentioned but they were drilling through a file with them. Details would be available through the office of Lardner Park field days (held near Warragul in West Gippsland). They are in the phone book.

Good luck..............Sean

Yup, that'd be them scooter. Very tough & expensive. I think that they will even drill through roll pins. They will do glass & ceramic as well.


Ken

I saw a guy drilling through files at the Working With Wood Show in Sydney. I have a brochure on it some where but I can't find it at the moment.

Cool set of drills he was drilling everything with it.

Also found this site http://www.highwayhardware.com.au/ne...u_drillbit.htm

G'day.

Gas axe.

As previously stated a Cobalt drill should do the job.

It looks like a cobolt drill bit is the go.

Hopefully Bunnings has it.

Thanks for all your words of wisdom

Cheers

Pulpo

Sorry for the spelling error. (cobolt?) But really I don't think you would want to read the posts to carefully on this forum or you will end up with a full time job spell checking.

Fair point

I use to sharpen masonry bits like a twist drill to drill harden steel with varying results. Actually it cut too aggressively so I use to put a very slight negative rake on the cutting edges with a few passes of a fine diamond file and it gives better results. A drill press is probably needed as it liked a lot of pressure.
Bunnies have a German brand multiple purpose drill bits that worked a treat to enlarge holes in hard steel but have not tried then yet in starting a new hole.

Glasses and ear muffs though! The tips can shatter if it is cutting too aggressively and the swarf flies everywhere and is white hot!

Time warp.

Hahaha! Cliff your right! I was reading about noisy AL960b gears and the tab at the bottom of the post said the next post was "drill bit for spring steel'. I just assumed it was a current thread!