Wanted: holes drilled for beer

[Stu H]

Hey Aucklanders,

Anyone out there with the ability to drill a couple of 1 1/4 inch holes,  and a 1/2' hole in stainless? I can offer very delicious homebrew in return. Building up a fancy new HLT ya see.

Look forward to hearing from y'all,

S

[Druid]

Hey Stu - sent you a PM...

[Robbo]

just grab some HSS bits (from an engineering shop, NOT bunnings) and put them in your handy dandy power drill. high speed, ease it on in there, gently through,, easy on the final push...

[mattd2]

I was alway of the understanding that with SS you want to go for lower RPMs

[Robbo]

if you're really interested you can look up a speed-feed chart and do the maths. personally, i f*ing hate calculations that involve circles and pies.
on a long bore, yes, you would typically lower the speed and feed as the hole deepened. but you still want a fairly high surface speed to ensure the drill doesn't deflect and the swarf is cleared.

for sheet metal, ideally you'd clamp a back plate to the other side and drill into it to prevent burring or tearing on exit, but that's my "easy on the final push" comment.

in short, running it faster is going to be better than running it slower. it's easier to stop pushing than it is to control the speed on a hand drill.