Drilling Stainless Steel

[Blueboatman]

That's an easy one to answer, If you take your good tools, that old kleptomaniac, Neptune, will nick them. He doesn't bother so much with the good ones.

You are so right

 

[dgadee]

Hilariously, I have a set of quality drills but I refuse to use one for this application because I don't want to blunt them. I think I'm gonna have to man up and accept wear on my shiney drills, rather than the manky drills I inherited from my Dad.

You can sharpen them. My brother, a fitter, showed me how to do it by hand.

 

[The Q]

I've drilled a lot of stainless steel , HSS drill bits are useless.
Its easy using M42 cobalt drill bits.

 

[fredrussell]

I recall someone on here saying you can drill stainless with a masonry bit, though I’ve never tried it. There’s vids on YouTube about it, I believe.

 

[Graham_Wright]

I've drilled a lot of stainless steel , HSS drill bits are useless.
Its easy using M42 cobalt drill bits.

In my engineering company, we always used HSS drills. Thousands of holes.
Technique and coolant are the tricks.

 

[PaulRainbow]

A few months ago, after reading a couple of recommendations on here, i bought a set of Lidl drill bits, £9.99 i think. Tried drilling some stainless with them and they did it with eases. Grabbed a couple more sets the following week.

 

[PCUK]

Same here, £4.99 a set, and they can be sharpened.

 

[PaulRainbow]

Same here, £4.99 a set, and they can be sharpened.

Yours was one (perhaps the only) recommendation that led me to try them, so thanks for that

 

[G12]

You want cobalt drills for stainless steel. Get the drill speed correct and don't force it into the stainless too hard or it'll just overheat and go blunt.
HSS will do the job but they're not the best really.

 

[Bouba]

Are onions used in the UK?
It seems to be recurrent is other countries, dip the drill bit in a onion and off you go (?)

So...which is it.....redcurrant...or....onion ?

 

[bignick]

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should….
It will cost you far more in drill bits and stress if you buy the cheaper one and try to drill it out.
Much better and easier just to buy the correct one in the first place.

 

[ducked]

I've drilled a lot of stainless steel , HSS drill bits are useless.
Its easy using M42 cobalt drill bits.

I used a quite expensive set of Dormer HSS bits that I bought many many years ago, which worked quite well.

Latterly I used the most expensive HSS I could find in Taiwan, and they were useless.
So it depends

I dunno what the current status of Dormer HSS bits is, (perhaps I'll find out soon) but it seems possible they aint what they used to be.

 

[Iliade]

A carbide tile drill should recover a work hardened hole; They have a more appropriately ground cutting edge than masonry bits.

Might cost a tenner, but mine lasted for many years before I snapped it.

 

[Bouba]

I’ll be honest.... I find drilling stainless a real pain....I make the pilot hole with a plasma cutter....instant job done. The hole can then easily be enlarged using a drill

 

[Keith 66]

I have drilled & machined a fair amount of stainless over the years, the rule is simple, slowish speed, high feed pressure & good cutting oil or coolant. You do not need fancy drills, Hss is perfectly adequate if its sharp.
In some ways i prefer Hss tools on the lathe to carbide as they are cheap & cut well with a good finish, carbide is only worth using if you are doing production at speed.

 

[ducked]

Ah lathes. Plasma cutters.

Different world.

The club my boat is at, that MIGHT let me join, though they are perhaps a bit annoyed I have delayed departure from Taiwan for so long, had a big lathe left there by the PO, a (retired?) North Sea machinist,

It didn't go with the boat, though, and they had sadly already decided to scrap it, so my lathing will probably remain limited to a single execution of a polyacrylamide electrophoreisis gel slicing razor blade array (two threaded rods with brass grubscrew secured endpieces, washer spacers, and lots of safety razor blades) under instruction of the resident machinist while working at Leeds University.

I suppose, though, that scrapping is perhaps only a marginally worse waste of machinery than letting me have it would have been, and is almost certainly safer.

 

[Daydream believer]

The drill bits one gets from Lidl are pretty much low quality & only good for drilling a bit of wood, or a few holes in some steel in an emergency. Very useful for loaning to a friend as they come with lots of spares, so one's friend can break one- they always do
I have a set that cost me £180 & they cut beautifully, They are made in small range differences so useful for special engineering & model making applications. I only ever use them in a mill at the correct speed, which is very high for small sizes. I also use Rocol drilling paste in most drilling & tapping applications. That makes a big difference
I made my own 4 facet drill sharpener & that gives lovely long swirls of swarf when cutting steel
For general use I have found Osbourne drills are excellent & I get them from Tracy tools (can I say that?)who give excellent service & supply a wide range of drills inc left hand which is use full for removing broken studs

 

[Bouba]

The drill bits one gets from Lidl are pretty much low quality & only good for drilling a bit of wood, or a few holes in some steel in an emergency. Very useful for loaning to a friend as they come with lots of spares, so one's friend can break one- they always do
I have a set that cost me £180 & they cut beautifully, They are made in small range differences so useful for special engineering & model making applications. I only ever use them in a mill at the correct speed, which is very high for small sizes. I also use Rocol drilling paste in most drilling & tapping applications. That makes a big difference
I made my own 4 facet drill sharpener & that gives lovely long swirls of swarf when cutting steel
For general use I have found Osbourne drills are excellent & I get them from Tracy tools (can I say that?)who give excellent service & supply a wide range of drills inc left hand which is use full for removing broken studs

I thought you were going to say that you buy cheapies....so that when you loan them to your friends....and they break them....they buy you expensive replacements

 

[PaulRainbow]

The drill bits one gets from Lidl are pretty much low quality & only good for drilling a bit of wood, or a few holes in some steel in an emergency. Very useful for loaning to a friend as they come with lots of spares, so one's friend can break one- they always do

That's not correct. I have some Lidl drill bits and they drill stainless steel just fine.

 

[Bouba]

That's not correct. I have some Lidl drill bits and they drill stainless steel just fine.

But let’s face it....you get your stainless steel from Lidl as well