Sometimes, you’ll need to drill a bigger hole than a standard bit will allow. Perhaps you want to put a cable-tidy hole in the back of a desk, or maybe you need a hole big enough to feed a pipe through. There are many different drill bits which are specially designed to bore wide, circular holes in material, and there are a few differences between them all.

“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.”

HSS bits are a little tougher and can drill through harder materials quicker and without blunting. They’re made using special alloys which helps them resist temperatures of up to 500°C, which is especially useful when drilling harder metals!

Some screws come with two slots which make a cross shape. You can use a regular slot screwdriver bit here, or you can use a crosshead screwdriver bit for extra purchase.

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

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?

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.

Star head screws (also called Torx screws) have a six-pointed star-shaped slot that’s very easy to recognise. You’ll most often find them in electrical appliances. Use a star screwdriver bit (you might see them called Torx bits, too) for best results.

Titanium bits look like twist bits, but they’re coated in a titanium alloy. They’re easily recognisable as they have a gold-coloured coating. The titanium makes the bit much harder and is slightly self-lubricating, which makes it perfect for drilling hard metals. However, you won’t really notice any benefit if you’re using titanium bits on wood and plastic.

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.

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).

Square screws are easy enough to recognise – they have a square socket on top of the screw head. Look for a square screwdriver bit to fit them. You’ll usually only find them in electrical fittings or on construction sites. The square design means you’ll almost never cam out when using one provided you have the right size bit.

“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.

Screwdriver bits do exactly what it says on the tin. If you’ve ever struggled to put together some flat-pack furniture, you’ll probably know how important it is to have the right size screwdriver bits to hand! While all screws do essentially the same thing, there are many different types. Each type of screw has a different slot on the head, which means they all need different screwdriver bits.

Image

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.

You’ll need a drill to do even the most basic DIY jobs around the house, whether it’s putting up a shelf or installing a light fitting. Most cordless drills come with a few basic drill bits anyway, but for some DIY jobs, you might need something extra. A specialist drill bit can offer more power, more precision, and a cleaner hole depending on what you’re drilling.

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.

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.

Socket bits are half drill bit, half socket. They can either be used as an extended hex shank for a screwdriver bit, or they can be used as a ratchet to tighten nuts and bolts. They’re quite easy to identify, as they’re cylindrical with a (usually) hexagonal socket at the end.

Many boring bits leave a rough or jagged hole in the surface you’re working on. If the material is an unusual shape, a sanding drum might be a bit awkward to use. That’s where grinding stones come in – they’re small, rough stones that come in a variety of shapes to help you grind, deburr, and buff rough surfaces. They’re a bit more versatile than sanding drums, but also usually a bit finer, so they’re better for smoothing out small, trick spots than wide, flat surface.

Brush bits are very simple, but they come in many varieties. They’re essentially small, circular brushes that fit onto the end of your drill. Soft brushes are used for buffing and polishing metal surfaces, whereas wire brushes tend to be used for clearing debris out of holes and pipework. Some fine wire brushes are similar to iron wool scourers, and can also be used for scuffing or finishing varnished wood. Make sure you check what your brush is made of before you use it as some aren’t suitable for use on certain materials. For example, if you’re working with stainless steel, you’ll want to make sure you have a stainless steel wire brush – other types of steel can contaminate stainless steel.

“[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.”

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.

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.

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.

Twist bits are the most common kind of drill bit. Most standard drills will usually come with a few differently-sized twist drill bits. They’re easy to recognise thanks to their corkscrew-like groove. You use twist bits to drill holes in flat surfaces, but depending on the material you’re drilling (metal, wood, brickwork, etc) you’ll need a slightly different twist drill to get the job done right.

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.

Image

Image

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.

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.

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.

Masonry bits look like larger twist drills with a slightly tighter corkscrew shape. You can identify them thanks to their wide arrow-shaped heads. They’re commonly used in hammer drills to grind masonry down as they cut through it. You can use them on brickwork, stone, breeze blocks, and other hard stone surfaces. You can use them on wood, although the hole will be ragged and it’ll probably take longer than a proper wood drill.

Pozi screws look a lot like Phillips screws, except for an extra small set of grooves that flare out from the centre of the main cross shape. A PoziDriv screwdriver bit has a blunt tip and parallel flanks, so it’ll fit snugly into the slot.

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, 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.

Hole saw bits are similar to wood spade bits, but they have a few key differences. They’ll still cut rough circles in wood, but they can also handle other materials like plastic and metal, too. Unlike wood spade bits, hole saw bits cut through wood rather than gouge it out, so they’re a little bit neater. However, this also means they have to cut a hole right the way through a surface. If you only want to gouge out a small divot in a piece of wood without piercing through the other side, you’ll want to use a wood spade bit instead. You can easily identify a hole saw bit thanks to their distinctive serrated edge.

When it comes to DIY, it’s important that you have the right tools for the job. This goes double for when you’re using a drill!  As you might imagine, drilling holes around your home without the knowledge or tools to do it properly can get messy pretty quickly.

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.

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.”

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 spade bits are also called paddle bits because of their wide, flat shape. They’re used for quickly boring out large, circular holes into wood. Unless you work in construction or are a fan of woodworking, you probably won’t have much use for these. If you do use one, remember to use a “sacrificial” piece of scrap wood underneath your workpiece. This is because spade bits cause splintering when they pierce all the way through a piece of wood.

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.

Slot screws have a single slot that goes from one side of the head to the other. They’re very common and are often found in flat pack furniture. You’ll need a slot screwdriver to fit them; slot screwdriver bits have a flat, blade-like design that looks like the end of a chisel.

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.

Countersink bits look a bit like arrows from the side – they have a fluted, cone-shaped tip. You can use countersink bits if you’re doing anything that requires flat-head screws. They bore a cone-shaped recess in wood which allows the screw to fit snugly into the hole without jutting out. This makes whatever you’re working on look better, but it also results in a stronger attachment.

If you need to bore a precise hole, you’ll need a Forstner bit. These bits have a circular, flat cutting edge surrounding a short centre pilot point. These bits can cut holes at an angle and they can even bore overlapping holes. If you need clean holes bored with precision, this is the way to go!

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.

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.

You can find most of the above (and more, including a metal ruler, a bandoleer, and a set of gauges) with the MYLEK 118-piece drill bit kit. You never know when you’ll need some specialist drill bits, so being prepared could save you a lot of headaches!

Most screwdriver bits are made from a chromium-vanadium steel alloy, so you might see them called CRV screwdriver bits. Don’t worry about this, though – it’s the shape of the bit you should be looking out for. Here’s how you can identify what screw you’re looking at so you know which screwdriver you need.

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.

Phillips screws are the most common kind you’ll find. They have a small cross on the head which doesn’t quite span the diameter of the screw. As you might expect, you’ll need the correct-size Phillips bit for one of these. Phillips bits have a pointed tip and a slight taper which helps it dig into the screw head.

You can usually use Phillips and PoziDriv interchangeably, although we don’t recommend it. Doing so increases the risk of your drill camming out (slipping out of the slot), which can damage the screw, the screwdriver bit, and it can even cause injury.

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?

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.

Sanding drums are incredibly useful things to have around the house! They’re cylinders of sandpaper that let you use your cordless drill as a sort of portable belt sander. They let you precisely sand down wood, so they can be used to correct warping in water-damaged door frames, sand down splintered bannisters, and more.

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.

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.

Steel bits are the softest, cheapest bits you can find. They’re good for drilling wood or plastic, and while they can be used to drill through harder materials like brick or metal, they will blunt quite quickly. Blunt bits can snag as they bore through materials, leading to ragged holes and splits. For drilling through these hard surfaces, you’ll probably want a harder drill bit to match.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”