Homemade friction drill

Hey guys
I was thinking of trying to make an homemade friction drill bit.
Has anyone tried this before?
What material should i consider for the bit? And how about tempering?
This is intended for regular construction steel

I'm pretty sure friction stir welding bits are made out of D2 so I would assume the same for friction drills. I would try using the bit in an annealed state. These tools are going to turn red hot during the process so I'm not sure the heat treatment matters much. At very least the heat treatment should be self correcting.

Keep in mind that you need a lot of downwards pressure to use these tools. It also puts a lot of wear on the bearings of the machine you are performing the operation on. The heat will go up the milling head so over time this will affect the machine (mostly the bearings).

Be sure to post pictures of your results. I've always wanted to try friction stir welding so I'm interested in your findings.

Outside of some exotic stuff, the only friction stir welding tools I've worked with are made from a tungsten-nickel-iron alloy. Densimet is the trade name of one of them. It machines well enough using carbide tooling at fairly high speeds.

Are you talking about friction drilling (as in Flowdrill) or friction stir welding?

(I know little about either.)

friction/flow/form drilling is the subject