Drill

drill, cylindrical end-cutting tool used to originate or enlarge circular holes in solid material.

Usually, drills are rotated by a drilling machine and fed into stationary work, but on other types of machines a stationary drill may be fed into rotating work or drill and work may rotate in opposite directions. To form the two cutting edges and to permit the admission of a coolant and the ejection of chips, two longitudinal or helical grooves or flutes are provided. The point, or tip, of a drill is usually conical in shape, and it has cutting edges where the flutes end. The angle formed by the tapering sides of the point determines how large a chip is taken off with each rotation of the drill. The degree of twist of the helical flutes also affects the drill’s cutting and chip-removal properties. For general-purpose twist drills the helix angle is about 32°. The angle formed by the two sides of the tapering point is 118° for standard drills, while for drilling tough metals, a flatter point with a 135° angle is recommended. The peripheral portion of the drill body not cut away by the flutes is called the land, and to reduce friction and prevent the land from rubbing against the sides of the hole, most of the land is cut away, leaving a narrow ridge called the margin that follows the edge of the side of the flute that forms the cutting edge. The fluted part, or body, of a drill is either hardened high-carbon steel or high-speed steel; other drills have inserts of cemented carbide to form cutting edges or are made from sintered-carbide rods. The shanks of twist drills are either straight or tapered and when not integral with the body are made from low-carbon steel and welded to the body. Straight-shank drills must be gripped in a chuck; tapered shanks fit with a sticking taper in matching holes in the machine and are driven partly by the taper and partly by a tang that fits in a slot in the machine. For enlarging cored, punched, or drilled holes, core drills are particularly suited. These have three or four flutes, and because the cutting edges do not extend to the centre of the drill, they cannot originate holes in solid materials. Cutting is accomplished by a chamfered edge at the end of each flute. See also auger.