Pro Tool Reviews: So you have a piece of metal and it needs a few holes in it. No big deal you think. You grab your drill and a bit. Five minutes later when you have barely made a dent in the metal, you decide it is time to go to the hardware store for a new drill bit. After a few minutes, the tip of the new drill bit turns blue and you still haven’t finished your holes. You take it to a friend’s house. The guy that seems to know how to do everything. He drills all the holes in seconds.
5 comments:
With all of the experience that I've had just drilling into steel in the field, these tips aren't the most new to me. Like granted, Sean did have to tell me to go up bit sizes when I was drilling into Sched 40 in the grid but that's it. It probably helps too if you have a sharp bit that goes in the right direction because believe it or not, there are bits that are left handed like the sweet devil intended. When I worked at the IRT during the onboarding they gave me a lot of our own tools to use and they gave us our own bits, which was great! BUT! No one noticed that the bits they gave me were left handed and I couldn't drill through anything but then we looked at the thread direction and found that they were going in the wrong direction. Either way, I feel like the second most important thing when drilling steel besides the skill was sharp bits.
This is a really really good article. I don't say that very often about comprehensive write-ups like this but he actually gets it right. Very legit info.
I've drilled into a good amount of steel in my time, but for some reason I had never considered the bits that I was using. The 3 most important things that I remembered of course, were punches, clamps, and cutting fluid. I was pretty successful with those 3 things, but it always took me a while. I never used drill presses either, I was doing it with a handheld drill, which wasn't exactly my favorite thing to do. I find it funny now, but a silly little misconception I had was that I was going to start a fire because the cutting fluid was smoking. I know you can damage tips with that much heat, but it feels kinda silly now that I've read this article.
But yeah, I'll keep all of these tips in mind later on! Remembering the right tips for the job will be a strong consideration for me from now on (in the event that I'm actually drilling steel any time soon, who knows).
I found this article interesting because I always want to learn more about how to work with different materials and tools in a shop setting. In the theatre industry, this information can provide to be very useful especially in shops in an educational setting where everyone is new to power tools and wants to make sure they understand every little niche to make sure they are well equipped in a professional setting. As a stage manager in high school, I didn’t spend much time in the shop so I appreciated the information introduced and explained in this article. However, my main concern is always safety, so by knowing this information now, I can keep a better eye out in case I see a potentially dangerous situation whether that be improper ppe or knowing to suggest a another tool or approach that will get the same job done in a safer manner.
I too have been caught trying to drill through steel with a left handed bit while crying to myself. I personally hate the experience of drilling through steel. Everything about it annoys me. Especially when trying to go through pipe. So I definitely think it is worthwhile to equip people to properly know how to drill through steel because it really is a different beast altogether in comparison to wood. Definitely can second using a drill press and showing your poor upper body some mercy in that regard. Tools like the ironworker are really the way to go if you have a lot of holes that you need to make in a working piece, though obviously that isn't always possible due to available tooling or just the work order in which certain processes need to happen. Using the right bits goes a long way. I tend to drill through steel as a three step process by changing out the bits I use, it makes things way smoother.
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