David Whitmire, District Manager
There are many things that can hold job shops back,
from tight tooling budgets to non-coolant through machines. On a recent visit to a customer located in
Overton, TX, the owner of a medium sized job shop had expressed a major concern
regarding one of his drilling operations.
The OSG solution easily solved both these issues and more.
The customer was trying to drill a 7/16” diameter
hole, 9” deep in alloy steel using a competitor’s high-speed steel drill,
running at 525 RPM and a feed rate of 0.003 IPR. With that tool, at those
parameters, they were pecking
every 0.050” to get the
chips out of the hole, which added considerable time to the process; it was taking
approximately 22 to 25 minutes to drill just one hole.
Based on the cutting
conditions and the trouble they were having with pecking, I knew that
this was a great application for the OSG HELIOS® Drill. OSG’s
V-Series HELIOS® drill is a high-speed,
cobalt drill designed for
deep-hole drilling. The
unique design and patented technology
of this drill gives it the
ability to process deep holes without the use of internal coolant supply.
State-of-the-art flute design
improves chip evacuation, making it feasible to drill up to 20D without pecking.
By utilizing OSG’s WXL®
coating, the V-Series HELIOS® drill can handle a wide range of materials with up to three
times greater wear
resistance versus conventional coatings.
Upon explaining the benefits of this high performance drill, informing the customer that we had a HELIOS® 7/16” x 20D drill available off the shelf with the required flute length and that we could run it at 837 RPM and 0.008 IPR, he immediately ordered two test drills.
As soon as the drills were delivered, I received a call from the machine operator wanting to verify the speeds and feeds before running the drills. After I confirmed that 837 RPM and 0.008 IPR was indeed accurate, his first comment was that he didn’t think the HELIOS® Drill would make it through one hole, but he proceeded with the testing based on those parameters.
When the operator couldn’t hear any noise on the first hole, he was sure the drill was already broken, but to his amazement, the drill was still in the machine when the cycle ended. Even then, the operator continued to be skeptical. It wasn’t until the HELIOS® drilled 100 holes and all the parts were completed that he was finally sold on this dynamic drill. The operator himself admitted that the HELIOS® Drill had dramatically reduced cycle time and saved three days of machine time alone.
When all was said and done, by eliminating all the pecking required with the other drill, we reduced the total drill cycle time from 25 minutes to 1.5 minutes per part. This didn’t even take into account the cost savings, which was estimated to be nearly $30,000 based on the 5,000 holes the shop was scheduled to drill.
OSG’s HELIOS® drill was able to help this customer improve their machining process and produce more parts off the machine per day. Plus, the HELIOS® Drill is a fraction of the price compared to solid carbide drills, making it a more economical solution with the flexibility to be used on non coolant-through machining centers.
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