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After cutting comes denesting and stacking, two critical elements without which laser blanking wouldn’t make much sense. Yes, some laser blanking systems have become so fast in certain applications that they’re outpacing some conventional blanking systems, but that fact wouldn’t mean much if the blanks had to be sorted manually.

To make this happen, laser blanking systems make smart use of telescopic conveyors. In Daimler’s laser blanking systems, two wide conveyors—one ahead of the active laser head(s) and one behind, positioned with a consistent gap between them—move forward and backward in the X direction (with and against the material flow), synchronized with the cutting action. This ensures the system always maintains a consistent gap underneath the cutting action, where gravity and a vacuum pull molten material, particulate, and fume away from the cut itself. Schuler calls this synchronized conveyor and fume extraction system “DynamicFlow Technology.”

By now we think it’s clear when and how to use the right wood drilling bit.  Have anything to add from your experience? Sound off on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to let us know what you think!

This is the type of bit that probably comes to mind first when you hear “drill bit.” It’s the most common type of bit and used for general purposes around the jobsite and home. Softwood can get stuck in the flutes, so gently remove it with a brush or by blowing it off.

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Two wide telescopic conveyors move in tandem underneath the active laser cutting heads, maintaining a consistent gap underneath for fumes and molten material to evacuate.

A blanking die is most cost-effective when it produces blanks with straight lines and angles. A laser prefers to work with a contoured blank, where the cutting head never has to decelerate entirely, turn, and accelerate around a sharp corner—and it just so happens that many of those contoured shapes aid formability in a stamping press, particularly for the drawing process. Regardless of the blank shape, laser blanking allows engineers to tweak it for better forming.

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You’ll immediately notice a threaded tip on auger bits. This type of wood drilling bit uses the tip to quickly pull the bit through the wood. Auger bits maintain a constant flute throughout the length of the bit. These bits challenge cordless drills because they “force” the drill to maintain speed throughout the hole due to the self-feed tip.

Of course, part volumes need to be adequate. “The laser blanking system is not ideal for handling [many] different shapes at the same time,” Hunger said, adding that it also requires nontabbed parts to be at least 250 mm long or wide.

The group, which included companies like DCT in Sterling Heights, Mich., and Alabama Laser Systems in Munford, Ala., along with laser experts such as Charles Caristan (now a technical fellow at Air Liquide), developed some initial concepts. A coil would be fed into a precision leveler, then into a laser cutting bed, after which robots or other devices would offload the cut parts and (when necessary) dispose of the skeleton. Since then advancing technology, including the high-brightness fiber laser, has made that concept a reality.

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What about other areas of metal fabrication? According to Hunger, the technology eventually could find a home in more service centers outside the automotive supply chain, and even at large sheet metal fabricators, particularly those that consume a large amount of certain material grades and thicknesses—enough to buy a coil at a time.

Wood species are divided into the two general categories of softwoods and hardwoods, but there is also much hardness variation within those categories. The wood type makes a significant difference in bit choice. Drilling a soft pine will be much easier on a drill bit than drilling a hard hickory. You can drill softer wood with steel (although we’d recommend HSS for any job) but as the hardness increases, it must be matched by bit hardness. This means a titanium or black oxide coating is appropriate for hardwood.

“As of today we can say that the equipment, like traditional blanking lines, needs frequent cleaning to ensure blank cleanliness. We currently do a biweekly standard cleaning and a half-yearly intensive cleaning of all conveyors.”

Daimler blanks cosmetically critical outer body parts, hence the need for a brush-based blank cleaning process after laser cutting. “Dirt and dust contamination were major concerns for us,” Heuer said, adding that even without the extra cleaning step, the process left “only minor dust that would be irrelevant for our following process steps.

These bits perform double duty as they drill a pilot hole and countersink the hole at the same time. This ensures that the fastener head sits just below the surface of the wood.

Sure, prototype and high-mix, low-volume fab shops won’t likely see a use for such laser blanking equipment in the foreseeable future. But if part volume grows, the story could change. If a fabricator’s or service center’s mix of cut profiles can be reliably denested, stacked, and sent quickly downstream, laser blanking then becomes a distinct possibility.

Another denesting scenario involves a nest with scrap that falls away in a so-called “gravity shedding” operation, which occurs outside the laser work envelope. This method works only if the scrap is oriented and shaped in such a way that it falls easily away from the strip.

This turned out to be an understatement. All these years later, the laser dominates precision sheet metal fabrication. It has blossomed in part because of its ability to cut any shape in any orientation. Nest layouts on a flat-bed laser in a high-product-mix, low-volume job shop resemble works of art.

The purpose of the hole affects bit choice. Will the hole accommodate an anchor to hold a picture, will it be used for wire or conduit, does the fastener that goes in it need to be countersunk?

Coil and leveler-cassette changes offer quick changeover from one material to another. Daimler, for instance, uses an automated process in which an operator inspects the material and initiates the changeover.

From here stacking can occur one of two ways. If the part orientation allows for it, and the gravity shedding is proven to be reliable, then cut parts can flow directly to the stackers, just as they would in a no-scrap situation, while the scrap falls into a scrap chute and into a bin. Alternatively, a series of robots can grasp the parts out of the skeleton and transport them over the scrap chute onto a conveyor belt leading into the stacker.

These odd-looking bits bore through wood or create flat-bottomed holes if the hole doesn’t go all the way through the piece. Use them when setting up cabinet hinges or similar applications.

Daimler now is using laser blanking to produce several cosmetically critical outer body components. “The plant is achieving a line speed in some applications up to 60 meters per minute,” said Germany-based Manuel Hunger, director of sales at Schuler, which designed and built Daimler’s laser blanking lines. “For instance, the line has produced more than 40 hoods per minute.”

Emily Wilkins, founder of Marketing Metal, helps job shops, machine shops, metal fabricators, custom equipment builders, and other...

The critical elements are denesting and stacking. As Hunger explained, certain automated denesting approaches on a laser blanker can follow some of the same strategies as automated denesting from a flat-bed laser. For instance, smaller parts can be tabbed together and lifted out by the robot as one unit.

Spade bits have a broad, flat area for boring larger diameter holes in wood. The spade bit has no flutes so you may have to back off the bit as you go when drilling deeper holes. While a traditional spade bit has a perfectly flat face, products like the Bosch Daredevil spade bit feature a self-feed tip and a slightly curved face.

The latest laser blanking lines exhibit the “toolless” flexibility that most metal fabricators with flat-bed cutting lasers have enjoyed for years. But some laser blanking lines also match, and sometimes exceed, the speed of many press-based blanking lines installed around the world. It’s a feat that The FABRICATOR editors in 1974 probably couldn’t have imagined.

The laser cutting work envelope has three laser cutting heads, each with a separate 4-kW IPG fiber laser power source. The heads move in the X direction as well as Y (across the strip).

The Fabricator is North America's leading magazine for the metal forming and fabricating industry. The magazine delivers the news, technical articles, and case histories that enable fabricators to do their jobs more efficiently. The Fabricator has served the industry since 1970.

Hunger said that having three laser cutting heads strikes a good balance. Having fewer heads slows the blanking speed, while having more heads leads to an excessive number of piercings, accelerations, and decelerations, simply because each laser head would be cutting only a small portion of the nest passing under it. And as part of a continuously fed sheet, the nest is truly “passing under” the laser.

Andreas Heuer, head of forming technology at Mercedes-Benz for the Gaggenau and Kuppenheim plants, has managed the Kuppenheim plant’s transition to laser blanking, which began in 2017. Photo courtesy of Daimler AG.

The core technology of laser blanking lies not with the laser cutting itself, but instead what happens underneath the kerf. The strip needs to keep moving, have space underneath for evacuating molten material, and remain fully supported—all at the same time.

A related bit to the installer bit is the flex bit which just uses a flexible shaft to let you get into tight spaces as needed. These can exist in lengths up to 72-inches.

The concept behind laser blanking in the U.S. goes back to the 1990s. Around the turn of the millennium, a multicompany consortium called Laser Blanking Central asked a question that, in retrospect, was ahead of its time: What if a blanking press could be replaced by a coil-fed laser cutting system?

As Hunger explained, laser blanking has several denesting scenarios, where good parts are separated from scrap. The first involves jobs that cut nests that leave no scrap whatsoever. Daimler’s laser-blanked hoods, common-line-cut one after the other, are a prime example. The hood blanks span the full width of the strip, emerge from the laser cell, pass through a cleaning process, then are sent down separate conveyors to high-performance stackers that are similar to those used on traditional blanking lines.

According to Hunger, Daimler’s lines are reaching overall equipment effectiveness (OEEs) levels beyond 75 percent. “We’ve never been able to reach such a level in a conventional blanking line,” he said.

The term laser blanking isn’t new, but it can spur confusion, especially for those outside the automotive supply chain. It’s in no way related to “tailor-welded blanks,” sometimes called “laser-welded blanks,” in which different cut profiles are joined by laser welding to create a single blank that has properties tailored to the application.

Often confused with a Forstner bit, self-feeding bits include a threaded tip like the auger bit. This pulls the bit through the wood. These bits are meant for holes that go all the way through the wood. This is exactly the right type of wood drilling bit when you want to make a lot of larger holes for rough-in. Typically, self-feed bits are used for boring larger holes.

Not necessarily. Laser blanking lines have made their way to some early adopters around the world, including SET Enterprises, a Michigan-based metal service center. In 2016 Daimler installed two laser blanking lines at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Kuppenheim, Germany. One more laser blanking line started production at another Mercedes-Benz plant in Germany at the beginning of this year, and a fourth line is in assembly stage.

“We have no need for additional space for die storage, and we don’t need overhead cranes for die changes anymore,” he said. “The high flexibility that comes along with this technology is also very beneficial for us, because we have an increasing number of vehicle types.

Being an early adopter, Heuer sees laser blanking eventually becoming the dominant blanking process in automotive. “In my opinion, laser blanking will substitute conventional blanking. The technology is a modern and innovative way to optimize the blanking process and increase efficiencies. And dies that are optimized for laser blank geometries will help make laser blanking more beneficial.”

“[Laser blanking] also has simplified geometric changes during the introduction of new die sets [for forming],” Heuer continued, adding that some blank geometry changes have aided downstream drawing processes. “For some sets, we created six to eight different [blank] geometries. This has allowed us to implement changes quickly without disrupting current production.”

Self-feed bits can be a tad more aggressive than other large-diameter wood bits. They can also use either one or two cutting heads in addition to the perimeter cutting teeth. Check out our review of the Milwaukee self-feed bits and the Diablo SPEEDemon self-feed bits.

Drill bits appropriate for wood drilling are steel, HSS, titanium coated, and black oxide coated. Those other bits work best for metals. We’ve written about black oxide coating and have reviewed the best drill bits as well as the best drill bits for metal.

Today’s auto industry has more model variation than ever, which of course has made die changes a target for improvement. Single-minute exchange of dies (SMED) is a great idea, but not having a die to change in the first place is even better.

Just as the name implies, these long, skinny “bell hanger” wood drilling bits are used for electricians pulling wires or performing similar installation work. In addition to their long length, installer bits often feature a hole near the front of the bit for use with pulling wire.

One day in early 1974, the then editors of The FABRICATOR perused a manuscript about a bleeding-edge technology that had spent years in the lab but was just then starting to make an appearance on the fabrication shop floor. Next to a grainy photo of a 500-watt CO2 laser mounted onto an oxyfuel cutting machine, the article stated: “Now, after all these years of promise, lasers have become an acceptable metalworking tool.”

“We cut blanks for all outer body parts and bigger structural parts for the main body for Mercedes-Benz cars and trucks,” Heuer continued. “We use the typical grades used by other car manufacturers, like galvanized steel and aluminum, ranging from 0.65 to 1.5 mm thick.”

Looking at the plant’s laser blanking line in action is like watching a highly choreographed dance, with each electronic and mechanical component playing a critical part. A coil is loaded onto a dual-coil payoff system as the previous coil is in process. If the new material requires it, the precision roller-leveler cassettes swap out automatically within a few minutes. When a coil change needs to happen, the uncoiler picks up and presents the new coil, which is fed with slack (no looping pit) through the leveler and into the laser cutting system.

Tim Heston, The Fabricator's senior editor, has covered the metal fabrication industry since 1998, starting his career at the American Welding Society's Welding Journal. Since then he has covered the full range of metal fabrication processes, from stamping, bending, and cutting to grinding and polishing. He joined The Fabricator's staff in October 2007.

Andreas Heuer, head of forming technology at Mercedes-Benz for the Gaggenau and Kuppenheim plants, began looking at the process at first for purely pragmatic reasons: The company didn’t want to alter its existing plant to make room for huge machine foundations, looping pits, and a high bay for the overhead cranes required to change blanking dies.

A hole saw uses a pilot twist bit to guide a large diameter rotary saw that removes a plug from the wood. This allows conduit or wires to pass through. You also use these bits when drilling out locksets for doors. You can find hole saws for both wood and metal.

Cars and trucks of the future also will need to be lighter and safer, hence the demand for advanced high-strength steels and other materials with seemingly ever-growing strength-to-thickness ratios. These materials aren’t kind to blanking dies. The laser, on the other hand, doesn’t care about a material’s tensile strength, just the thickness and the material grade’s ability to absorb the laser’s energy. Laser blanking doesn’t eliminate all concerns about high-strength materials—the coil-fed material still needs to be leveled before it reaches the laser cutting heads—but removing the blanking die does mitigate a fair number of technical hurdles.

Of course, as order volumes grow, laser cutting traditionally has made less economic sense. This remained the case even as the fiber laser took the market by storm more than a decade ago. A fantastically fast fiber laser looks incredibly productive, but the cutting head still needs to trace the part’s profile.

Before we get to drill bit types, you should be familiar with the various treatments drill bit manufacturers use to increase bit life and reduce friction. Drill bits are made from steel, high-speed steel (HSS)—which is steel alloyed with tungsten and/or molybdenum, HSS with a cobalt alloy, HSS with titanium coating, HSS with black oxide coating, or carbide tipped.

As we mentioned above, twist drill bits (or “twist bits”) can range in price from affordable black oxide coated bits to expensive carbide bits used in milling. When it comes to choosing a drill bit for your wood project, a nice set of high-speed steel (HSS) bits should do just fine.

Most of us are guilty of using the wrong tool for the job—either out of necessity or laziness. Still, there’s something satisfying about using the right tool for the job. Often, using the right tool helps bring about the best possible result. When drilling, accessories matter—possibly even more than the tool you choose. Knowing the various types of wood drilling bits and how to use the right one can really increase both speed and quality.

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This wood drilling bit’s distinguishing feature is in the name. The sharp point on a brad point bit helps position the bit for a precise hole. These bits don’t walk on you when you start a hole. This makes this the right wood drilling bit for when you need a truly accurate start.

A stamping press can cut a blank’s profile all at once, hence the stamping press’s dominance in high-volume blanking, particularly in the automotive industry. There’s no way a laser could outpace a traditional blanking line with mechanical stamping presses—right?