31–40 of 51 posts
What is the smallest drill bit one can buy?
The middle sized bits are occasionally useful to (carefully!) finger-drill a tiny hole through a plastic part. They're rigid, very sharp, but pretty breakable if you're not careful.
The 0.1mm bit is so small that it's upsetting even to look at. I've never taken it out of the case.
If you're interested in feats of micro-drilling, I invite you to watch a Japanese game show where a machinist with a micro drill competes against one using an electrical discharge machine to drill lengthwise through a 0.5mm pencil lead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHR9YQl7ObU
Two weeks later, they get a package, eagerly open it, and find inside a letter in Japanese and their part. Not being able to see any numbers, they get someone to translate it. The letter reads: "We didn't quite understand what you wanted us to do, so we drilled a hole and cut a thread in it."
If you're interested in feats of micro-drilling, I invite you to watch a Japanese game show where a machinist with a micro drill competes against one using an electrical discharge machine to drill lengthwise through a 0.5mm pencil lead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHR9YQl7ObU
Reminds me of the old joke: A German company manages to create a section of incredibly thin wire - so thin that they don't even have the tools to accurately measure it. So they carefully package it and ship it to a Japanese company, with a letter asking them to measure it. Two weeks later, they get a package, eagerly open it, and find inside a letter in Japanese and their part. Not being able to see any numbers, they…
One thing that strikes me as odd is 2:48 it says the rollomatic produces 48 pieces per hour, and then at 3:24 a human dominated process for centering the work piece to have it's drill curve cut "take four to five hours". They surely don't have 200 of these setting jigs. So, are there just lots of blanks made? do they damage that many of the work pieces in the process of setting one up? Are the surplus units used in s…
They also said that the centerless grinding process is used to reduce the length of the blanks. I'm pretty confident they're doing it to get the finished diameter of the shank. I find the How It's Made segments to be irritatingly shallow and sometimes grossly inaccurate. You could easily do a 22 minute segment on making these things if you went into more depth.
It's all well and good until they touch on a process you're very familiar with then 'holy moly, is it always this bad?'
Still one of my favorite shows though...it's eye candy for machine dorks like myself.
Anyone know how much these cost to buy?
Here's links to other other micro drill bits and micro end mills:
- https://www.mcmaster.com/micro%20drill%20bits/
- https://www.mcmaster.com/micro-end-mills/mill-diameter~0-002...
What is the smallest drill bit one can buy?
That's the absolutely small I could find, though I suspect specialty vendors have even smaller ones. You can find MMC's other micro drill bits here: https://www.mcmaster.com/micro-drill-bits/
My only experience with these was in school where we used 0.25mm micro end mills (like a drill bit that cut sideways) to cut our own PCBs. A small desktop micro CNC would just cut the traces out of a blank copper clad board. That's when I learned how easily these bits can break, so even though they're not that expensive you go through them very quickly.
One thing that strikes me as odd is 2:48 it says the rollomatic produces 48 pieces per hour, and then at 3:24 a human dominated process for centering the work piece to have it's drill curve cut "take four to five hours". They surely don't have 200 of these setting jigs. So, are there just lots of blanks made? do they damage that many of the work pieces in the process of setting one up? Are the surplus units used in s…
This video seems to be unavailable in Canada, unfortunately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_It%27s_Made > Canadian documentary television series that premiered on January 6, 2001, on the Discovery Channel in Canada and the Science Channel in the United States. The program is produced in the Canadian province of Quebec by Productions MAJ, Inc. and Productions MAJ 2.
Cutting tools are like F1 cars: they work best when you run them at the right speed, and that speed is a lot faster than you're going to be comfortable with!