Tool length influence on wear behaviour of twisted carbide drills

The drilling of holes with an l/d-ratio greater than 12 is responsible for a significant amount of the overall production time and therefore has a high impact on the productivity. In the past gun drills were used for those higher l/d-ratios, providing good surface qualities and straight holes. However the productivity of gun drills compared to solid carbide twist drills is very low, due to the limited feed rate. With the use of solid carbide twist drills with l/d-ratios up to 40 and overall lengths up to 350 mm production time can be reduced extensively. Solid carbide twist drills can furthermore be used on standard machine tools. Former drilling tests show that the tool life of these drilling tools decreases abundantly clear with an increasing tool length. This paper presents the influence of the drill length and the dynamic behaviour of the drilling process on the wear behaviour of the drilling tool.