Drilling Hole 1" deep in Copper

Jul 14, 2006 3 Replies
W

i am posting to ask for advice on hole size in a block of machined copper.



i don't have my text books with me. i don't remember alloys of copper. for machining.


1" thick stock fly-cut both sides down to .980.

part size - about 1" x 1" x .980.



then i need a hole through the middle.



that's a long way to drill. the design benefits from having a smaller size hole in there, it's for a heat sink. but a 1/8" diameter through an inch of copper ?



i'm not sure i'd want to ask a machinist to do that. might lose parts to drill breakage, don't want to have to deal with that.



so, what diameter would be most manufacturable ?



thanks !



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N

Dear wwswimming:

Heat sinks benefit from having short conduction paths and high surface area. A cube has none of this. Its only saving grace will be relatively high heat storage capacity, so short duty cycle.

A drill should be OK. It have seen obsure shapes formed using "electrical discharge machining" (EDM) ... a simple hole should be no problem for EDM.

No, but might "gum up" the flutes.

I don't think it will be as bad as you imagine. Any reason you aren't using one of the thousand or so standard heatsinks?

1/8" not a problem.

David A. Smith

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E

We do this all the time in heat sink copper propulsion models at work. Yes so care must be used, or you may need a visit to the edm to remove the bit.

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