How to drill a hole

Step 4 Drill

Put on safety glasses and ear protection as appropriate. Let someone else know you are using power tools, if working alone.

First, ensure that the drill is spinning the right direction and speed. If you wrap your right hand around the drill with your fingers pointing in the direction of rotation, your thumb should be pointing into the material to be drilled.

Alternatively, watch the flutes (the spiral grooves in the drill). When the drill is spinning, they should appear to be moving away from the material. In fact, the flutes? job is to remove cut chips out of the hole.

Again, use common sense or a handbook to determine the proper speed.

Plunge the spinning drill into the material. The drill should be cutting without requiring a tremendous amount of force along its axis. If the drill does not appear to be cutting ensure that the flutes are not clogged. In materials such as aluminum, you need to ?peck? at the material: plunge in to cut, and then pull out to remove chips. Clogging the drill while continuing to apply more and more force into the material is a sure way to break a drill bit.

For metals, cutting fluid can be helpful. Cutting fluid can be oil, water, detergent, or a mixture of those three. It helps to lubricate the sliding contact between the drill and the work piece, flush chips away from the interface, and to cool the drill.

Comments

[Visitor]

If using a hand drill, now is the right time to check that the drill is not on set on the "hammer drill" function (if one has such). That sound against a steel bicycle frame is especially nasty...

[Wyle_E]

I once had a new bit overheat before I realized that the last time I'd used that drill was to extract a screw. Now I always check the direction switch before I pull the trigger.