How to Drill Small Holes: Tips, Tricks, and Speeds & Feeds for Micro Drilling!

Drilling small holes presents many challenges. From speeds and feeds to adjusting runout, micro tools require more effort! We are drilling these holes in aluminum on the Tormach 1100MX using a Harvey Tool 1/64 (0.016") drill and a Lakeshore Carbide 1/32 ( 0.031") Split Point Drill. We discuss the importance of tool shanks, holders, and adjusting runout. Happy Drilling!

00:00 Intro: Drilling with Carbide Micro Tools
00:20 Harvey Tool 1/64 - Carbide Drill with Stepped Shank
00:40 Lakeshore Carbide 135 Degree Split Point 1/32
01:00 Lakeshore Carbide Center Drill & Why Spotting Matters
01:15 Adjusting Runout
02:04 Spot Drilling, Drilling with Harvey Tool Speeds & Feeds
03:17 Drilling with Lakeshore Carbide Split Point Drill
04:32 Micro Tool Final Thoughts

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Links for this video

How to Adjust Tool Runout

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reach us / CNC Info:

[piccilos]

Vince's narration is so chill, its like the NPR of machining.

[brandons]

Just another tip for success. You should use a spot drill that has a wider angle then your drill point. Example if your drill has 135 degree point you should use a 140 degree spot. This way the drill finds the center of the spot first. This is actually what Harvey tool recommends. I'm using this technique to drill a .012 hole .175 deep in 17-4 condition H900. We are able to get 75- 100 parts out of one drill.

On the straight shank drill you bought a drill with AlTin coating. You should avoid using coatings that contain aluminum while working with aluminum. Aluminum like to stick to other metals, especially itself. This can cause chip to stick to the tool causing all kinds of issues. You can actually see it happen in this video.

If you are working on a live tool lathe it's best to run the main spindle as well as run the small drill with a live tool. This lets you effectively get higher surface footage. The spindles should rotate so that if either one was not running the drill would still cut. I also run the spot drill on a live tool as well with the both spindles running this way the spot has no choice but to be on center. These techniques can help overcome some machine mis alignment like if the machine has been crashed. The Citizen machines at my shop are all in really good condition. Using these techniques I've managed to drill holes to within .0005 of the drill stated size even at micro sizes.

[capnthepeafarmer]

My favorite small diameter carbide drills are the McMaster-Carr "Quick change" drills, most of them are just M.A. Ford drills. Everything below 0.125" uses a 0.125" shank and are super affordable at like, $7 for most drills. M.A. Ford recommends for their drills to not spot at all, and I was able to be successful without pecking either. However, I had a MUCH lower feed rate. It's a recommended SFM of like 400, and on small drills at 10k rpm, you're only moving about 1/8th of the recommended SFM. So I reduce my feed to 1/8th of the recommendation and that's worked well, although probably too conservative if I'm honest.

[AmazingPrototyping]

Thanks for this video! :)
That was just in Time.. Today I killed four 1mm drills, so hopefully with the new infos it will work 😉👍

[prodesign]

This will sound cheesy, but I learned to break the micro cutters with Harbor Freight ones. You can buy a 10 pack of various micro sizes for dirt cheap (I think around $8 a 10 pack). They are surprisingly great as I have completed many orders for fixturing that required 0.02" features that were about as deep as the flute lengths (around 0.3" deep). I've had jobs earlier on that had me breaking a dozen before finding a nice cutting recipe and I didn't cry since it cost me pennies to learn what I can and cannot do with these tiny "pencil lead" endmills. Great vid!

[MaxWattage]

This was great, can you do one about using very small end-mills (i.e. <2mm dia), as I'm forever breaking those. Technique, speeds, feeds, best chip-evacuation method for tiny end-mills in Aluminium / Steel. (e.g compressed air, flood coolant, fog-buster?)
End-mills cut sideways, and It takes very little sideways bending force to snap a very small diameter carbide end-mill. One stuck chip and it is broken.

[Apathymiller]

We always had better luck with slower speeds & feeds. But we were also running brass bronze & copper for vaping...

[brucec]

Great stuff, I'm always having to drill tiny holes.

[amar-jstn]

Printed circuit boards are routinely drilled with tiny carbide bits similar to the Harvey one, with no liquid coolant. The drill spindles often run at 50, 000-200, 000 RPM. They usually place a thin sheet of soft aluminum on top of the boards before drilling. This helps to keep the tip of the bit from wandering and snapping off, similar to what you accomplished by spot drilling. I actually adapted a micro air die grinder onto my CNC mill that runs at 56, 000 RPM, and before that I adapted a dremel tool that went up to 35, 000 RPM.

[jimburnsjr.]

seriously awesome as always.. thanks for the lesson.

[jimmanney]

Well planned video and really informative

[Denchik_]

If you want to drill small hole you should use more precision holder than ER collet chuck. Adjusting runout is so so idea in this case IMHO. In second you should supply a coolant through the tool. If number of holes is huge, especially in hard-processing material, or tolerance of distance between axes is aiming to zero, you should buy ultrasonic machine.

[finnsuchara]

In you're experience are there other realistic alternatives to those super tiny collets ya'll were using, like a shrink fit equivelant or something like that?

[dodgev]

Could use some more volumn. With my phone turned up all the way its a comfortable volumn while at home or whatever. But when at work i can't get enough volumn to hear over the machines. John is usually just loud enough to hear while at work.

[Nickle]

A question on the pecking. Do you fully take the drill out of the hole? Or do you just take it to near the edge? I can sort of argue both. Just taking it to the edge clears most of the swarf, but its still located, and hence cannot wobble as much as if you take it out completely with swarf attached, and swinging round.

[ghjkrsxcg]

How do you measure such small dia holes?
A plane plug gauge of 0.3 mm tents to bend over time. Is there any other measuring device to measure micro drill holes?

[robertacevedo]

How about a video on nickel alloy or Monel

[wiraxbox]

a bit silly question but i need to understand it, if the little brill bit breaks inside the hole is it impossible to remove it?

[BhInsane]

For such small hole diameters HSS/Co drills are better.

[ghjkrsxcg]

How do you measure the dia of these drilled holes?