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Most economical carbide tipped coolant thru drills for mild steel?

dandrummerman21

Stainless
Joined
Feb 5, 2008
Location
MI, USA
I'm looking for suggestions on replacing a few tools. Running parts out of 1018 or a36, drilling a few holes (.228, .281, .406). Holes are thru, and range from .400" deep to about .800 deep (most are about .500" deep).

Recently moved the job to a machine with TSC (old machine did not have it).

Currently have a mix of HSS and generic carbide (non-tsc) drills making these holes. But would love to push them out much faster. Something that breaks chips well (which I know can sometimes be difficult in this material) so I don't need to peck or reverse the spindle to throw chips off.

I normally look to Iscar, and we've used the iscar chamdrills in the past. But I'm willing to look at other options and compare prices.

List on an iscar drill body for the .406" insert that is 1.5x is about 200$, 240$ for the 3x body. Inserts are nearly 100$ each though?

List on a drill body for the .281 drill is the same, and the inserts are 90$ each.

I would imagine I would need solid carbide for the .228 drills. I know what I'll buy for that.

Anything more economical out there? These are not quite outrageous prices but was wondering if there are significantly cheaper options.
 
I was going to recommend YG-1 I-Dream drills, but I see they don't go small enough for your holes. They also have the I-One drills that go down to 10 mm, but that only gets you the largest hole. I did see recently that Tungaloy has some replaceable tip drills that go very small. It's the DrillMeister line that goes down to 4 mm. I only have experience with the I-Dream drills, and they work fine. I imagine any of these options could be more economical than the Iscar drills.
 
I have had super results with Titex A6585TFT-(size) drills*, but these are a very long drill and you would be looking for it's shorter brother.


* solid carbide


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
I've had decent luck with Maford TSC solid carbide drills, they're decently priced; cheaper than those Iscar indexable for sure. They make all of those sizes in their 3xD cyclone series drill.

I'd go solid carbide for all of them, odds of twisting one of those smaller HSS indexable bodies off at increased cutting parameters makes me shy away.
 
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I've had good luck with Kennametal GoDrills. Not usually a real big fan of Kennametal but these are cheap and reliable. I wasnt even using the coolant through version and still getting good performance.
 
Price wise I have been happy with the few Maritool smaller drills. Non-thru coolant. The aqua drills (similar to crazy drill teachme recommends) I have used (qty 2) have been all that for partial and crooked holes- not price friendly for plain holes.
 
I haven't found a better bang for the buck solid carbide drill than MA Ford. For general purpose drilling, their stuff is SOLID. And relatively inexpensive.
 
I would also say go with solid carbide. YG, Guhring, Walter. We use quite a bit of the Walter DC150's and they are reasonable but not as cheap as 2 years ago.
 








 
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