Hi again morsetaper2:
As others have remarked, there's no harm in trying and we live in hope the experience wasn't too awful.
But I do have to smile at everyone who remarked that an 0.043" drill is TINY.
In my world, that's like a telephone pole, and I'll betcha many others on this forum are nodding agreement and chuckling quietly too.
Of course as I recently remarked on another thread, I've got a buddy who thinks a 1/2" drill is too small to use so I guess it all depends on your perspective.
Cheers
Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining
BTW: with regard to your spindle speed...you were NOT running it too fast for the material and the drill, you were running it too fast to be able to keep up with the necessary feedrate to keep the drill cutting.
The nominal RPM for your drilling operation in Invar is 40 FPM with HSS drills, so about 3500 RPM, and at a 0.001" chipload (recommended for a 1/16" drill) you'd be feeding around 3.5 IPM which is way faster than you can control.
Your machinist is both correct and not correct (if that's even possible).
I neglected to mention that on a manual machine, you want to run the drill about as he recommended and never ever EVER follow the CNC chart recommendations...you just don't have the reflexes and the control to get away with it.