You want to drill a hole in stainless steel but don't know which twist drill to use? In this article we explain how to drill in stainless steel and which twist drills to use.

You should not wear gloves, because they can get caught in the twist drill. In contrast to the gloves, you should unconditionally put on protective goggles.

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See the table below for information on the speed and feed settings and the type of cooling. You can download the speed table as a PDF file. Click on the image.

Milling aluminum with high-speed spindles allows for higher feed rates with smaller tooling, resulting in lower cycle times and burr-free finishes. DATRONs reach speeds up to 60,000 RPM. The aluminum chips are blasted away by a combination of pressurized air and ethanol coolant, so the heat doesn’t have time to build up. The ethanol evaporates during milling, which means no secondary cleanup of the part and no paying for coolant disposal. The patented tool designs efficiently evacuate chips and leave a smooth surface finish.

The spiral angle determines the process of chip formation. Small spiral angles are used for hard short-chipping materials.

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If you want to use a coating, e.g. to increase the tool life, it should be at least the TiAlN coating, because it has a high heat resistance. With TiAlN-coated drills, cooling is not necessarily required. In addition, they prevent cold welding on the drill.

You need a rigid milling machine instead of a desktop CNC mill to make aluminum parts with tight tolerances and complex geometries. DATRONs are built for precision machining with their rigid construction, high RPM spindles, and micro tooling. The smart control software and touch probe compensate for workholding disparities and any irregularities in your aluminum stock. So your parts stay consistently accurate.

With cooling you ensure that the surface quality is optimal, the temperature is lowered and the chips are swept away. This extends the life of the drill

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You should not have used the twist drill on other steels before. The metal particles on the twist drill can attack the stainless steel and make it susceptible to corrosion.

Stainless steel is a metallic material which is characterized by its special purity . There are alloyed and unalloyed steel, but only the alloyed variant is also stainless.

In the application table you will find all our twist drills with which you can drill in stainless steel. If you click on the images of the twist drills in the PDF, you will be taken directly to the product page where you can find detailed information about the twist drill.

If you do not have a pillar drill available, use the pointed side of the punch and a hammer to make a small recess in your stainless steel workpiece. This gives you better guidance and prevents slippage when drilling. The center punching compresses the material a bit, but mainly the material is displaced to the side and over the top of the material. This does not pose any extreme challenges for the twist drill.

Stainless steel is a very hard material and therefore difficult to cut. Therefore, the tool steel of the twist drill should be made of HSSE-Co 5 (5% cobalt content), HSSE-Co 8 (8% cobalt content) or solid carbide.

If possible, use a pillar drilling machine as it allows you to better control the centering, speed and feed . High feed rate is required and your speed is rather low when drilling.

Everything from the machine construction to the vacuum workholding and tool design was developed to provide manufacturers with an efficient and effective CNC mill for aluminum machining.

If you have found the right twist drill and follow these instructions, you will get a good drilling result in stainless steel.

In our detailed article "8 features of a twist drill and its functions" you will learn all the important features of twist drills and which functions they have when drilling.

The break sensitivity in comparison to HSS is higher in HSSE-Co or carbide tool steels. Basically you can negate this with the correct application (correct speed, feed and cooling). In general, the more cobalt, the harder and therefore more brittle the drill.

Under certain conditions (e.g. type of stainless steel, point angle, spiral angle etc.) you can also use a TiAlN-coated HSS drill. There are some stainless steels that are easy to cut and can also be drilled with coated HSS drills.

A tool steel that is too soft would immediately overheat. So since stainless steel is a hard material, you need a twist drill type H. In the course of time, the features of twist drills have been combined differently in order to optimize them for special applications. Thus, mixtures have formed whose naming system is not standardized in the DIN manual. So you will find at RUKO for use in stainless steel types VA, FO, UTL3000, UNI, TL3000, N and UTL.

The twist drills made of HSSE-Co 5, HSSE-Co 8 or solid carbide do not neccesarily need coating . Coated drills are still ideally suited for industrial use. I.e. fast speeds (high cutting speeds), high feed rates and increased heat applications.

In stainless steel, it must be enriched with alloying elements such as titanium, niobium or chromium in addition to iron. Chromium (Cr) is the corrosion resistance of stainless steel and should have a minimum content of 12% and an extremely low carbon content. The chromium content creates a layer on the material surface which permanently protects against water and moisture.

In observance of Indigenous People's Day, DATRON Dynamics will be closed on Monday, October 14, 2024. We will return to normal operations on Tuesday, October 15th.

The point angle is located at the head of the twist drill. For hard materials such as stainless steel, the point angle should be large and e.g. 130° or 135°. For soft materials, point angles of e.g. 118° are used.

You have chosen a suitable twist drill and now you finally want to drill your hole in stainless steel. When drilling, it is important that you

With a large point angle, more of the cutting edge engages in the workpiece when drilling. This also means that more force is applied to the workpiece and higher contact pressure (high feed) is required.

In each of our product groups you will find a Product finder. Under Products > Twist drills you can filter "stainless steel" in the field Applications. You will then be shown all twist drills that can be used for cutting stainless steel.

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With cooling you ensure that the surface quality is optimal, the temperature is lowered and the chips are swept away. This extends the life of the drill

Since stainless steel is a very hard material, you have to choose the right twist drill. The twist drill should belong to the application group Type H of the DIN 1386 division. Over time, however, mixed forms have been developed whose naming systems are not standardized in the DIN manual. So you will find at RUKO for the use in stainless steel the types VA, FO, UTL3000, UNI, TL3000, N and UTL.

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What features does the twist drill have to have in order to cut stainless steel? The following criteria must be met in order to obtain a good drilling result.