Stainless steel

thickness? You can drill thin SS with a HSS drill bit, or to do it properly you need carbide tipped drills.
 
Mmmmm

Diameter ?
Depth ?
Quantity of oles ?

Normally Dormer HSS (or good qual HSS) should do fine unless doing some serious depth and thickness.
 
mark where the hole is togo, centre punch position. THIS STOPS THE DRILL SKIDING and marking your workpeice. use a centre drill, if needed drill a smaller (pilot) hole 1st then use you correct drill size.

you can use HSS or Carbide. make sure they are sharp.
use coolent, AND most of all dont run the drill 2 fast, start of slow and increase the speed youll know when its cutting well.

hope this helps
 
I've never used a carbide tip to drill stainless. I've used tipped tools for turning, but never drilling. I can't imagine what they must cost! Do as Bassrock says. Use a good quality HSS drill, Dormer or similar & you should have no trouble. Use a good cutting fluid such as Supercut or Rocol,pilot drill first...No Probs !!
 
lot of boll0x on this thread imo, carbide my ****, you need to use cobalt drill bits when drilling stainless.

You might get away with ordinary HSS for one or two holes, but if you are drilling several, then you need to use a cobalt drill bit.

Advice about drilling a pilot hole first is sound, however
 
Increase angle? I've always found 120 fine & surely no need to reduce land if pilot drilled first. Cobalt drills? Never found any advantage over HSS in S/S. I'm sure everyone has their own opinions, so the more replies you receive, the more confusing the problem will become. Sorry Mate....Good luck. :O
 
I've had another thought....After decrying carbide tipped drills, has anyone tried those Bosch "Multi constuction" bits? They are supposed to drill any material, as they have a sharpened carbide tip. I know they work fine in brick etc., but maybe they would work in S/S. Has any one tried them?
 
Ooops! For constuction, read construction

Hi Malkie, Wickes used to sell a carbide tipped bit which was sharpened like a HSS bit. They used to sell them as "general purpose" I think.

They were great for drilling brick especially with cordless (no hammer) and would also drill through a catnic with no problems.

Dare say they would be fine with stainless.
 
I reckon he will have done the job now. He posted two
weeks ago :(

IWS: It Was a Slow response. :)

I saw him at the weekend taking my advice.

IWS: In Wickes Saturday
 
I've never found stainless a problem to work with (not as bad as people make out),but spring steel is another matter altogether. It usually needs to be annealed by heating & then allowed to cool slowly. It can then be drilled just like mild steel. Now it needs to be hardened again by heating & quenching rapidly, but this makes it brittle, so it needs to be tempered. Do you really need to drill it ? ;)
 
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