Any good use of carbide PCB drills

They are carbide. They cut through hard stuff. They are used in PCB manufacturing because G10 fiberglass is really rough on HSS bits.

EVERYTHING you have heard about their brittleness is true. I have broken 0.4mm drills simply by picking them up wrong.

Not really the same thing. The Dremel ones are HSS. Iggy's got solid carbide.

I used to use those in the industry. I know what I'm talking about. The SS ones are drills. The ones with a plastic ring about the middle are the real things. One of the things I learned - many people turn in the drills of all sizes to be re-ground and calibrated tip to plastic.

When we took ours there, they were selling boxes of what we used for almost nothing. So we bought boxes and later got ours. All were sharp and he was trying to get his sharping price back out of them. So many companies died and left stuff everywhere. Motor places had fixes but no longer a customer. In the last 6 years in the south bay I worked for three companies. A big one got out of the business. Before that, I got my bonuses and VP and I found jobs before the crash. Then while at another small company a good friend and I created a product line that customers asked for the parts. Then a big fish bought us out and at that location once again started using carbide in very high speed spindle in CNC to drill prototype boards. Mill with 5 mill and drill the holes for connections and parts. Most of ours were surface mount. Grounds and power were on two planes and drilling connected them.

Mart> >> Hobby dills tiny drill holes. Look into any Dremel box

G10 was outlawed 25-30 years ago. FR4 was the replacement. G10 catches on fire. FR4 self extinguishes. If you look you can't tell. If you read or design with them - really design transmission lines you know.

Mart> >> I am parting out a PCB drilling CNC machine. Inside of it, there is a

Oh I bet you go for the small ones, twinky.

Fine. FR4 is deadly abrasive for HSS drills as well. OK?

Yes it is OK to call banned stuff. I have some G10 in the shop, scrap I got years ago. With the radio shack going up in smoke for the most part, supply of PCB material for those of us that experiment is getting scarce.

Mart> >> G10 was outlawed 25-30 years ago. FR4 was the replacement. G10 catches

RS will indeed be missed. I have a pretty good supply of stuff, but having them down the street was a good backup sometimes. FWIW, Ebay has a pretty w ide selection of board blanks at tolerable prices. As I gain confidence in cnc routing boards, I expect to be doing more ultra-quick protos.