How do you drill through stainless steel at home?

news:rec.crafts.metalworking would be a better place to ask. (Added)

You should have sharp drills with more relief that normal. But you can do it with regular drills. Stainless steel work hardens so you need to be cutting and not rubbing. You probably do not have enough horse power to use a half inch drill with no pilot hole. So start by drilling a hole about an eighth of an inch in dia. Be fairly agressive and use some oil. Any oil is better than none, but oil made for cutting stainless is of course best. You probably will not drill all the way thru without stopping. So when you stop retract the drill quickly. Again stainless work hardens . You want to be cutting or not cutting. No halfway .

After you have drilled all the way thru with the 1/8 inch drill, move up to something bigger. Maybe a 1/4 inch drill. Followed by maybe

This advice assumes you are using a drill press. RPM needs to be about 60 sfm. So slower RPM with the bigger drills. If you are using a hard drill, good luck.

Dan

That's a hell of a can opener if it's 1/2" thick! Might be lassoing it with a lanyard would be a better way to go.

Stan

I'd grind a very small flat spot with a Dremel tool (to prevent the drill bit from skating) and anneal the end with a propane torch. You can remove any discoloration with polishing.

-I'd grind a very small flat spot with a Dremel tool (to prevent the

-drill bit from skating) and anneal the end with a propane torch. You

-can remove any discoloration with polishing.

Can openers are hard enough to keep their edge while puncturing steel cans, such as tomato juice comes in..

I've seen tensile strength listed as high as 200,000 PSI for Type 302 used for pallet strapping.

You could hang the can opener by a Prusik loop of fancy boot lacing etc around the middle:

This knot survives handling better than a square knot:

If you use braided Nylon cord you can melt and fuse the ends of the loop and roll the warm joint flush so it nearly disappears. jsw

Yeah, it's a doozie (for a can opener)!

I bought it at Bed Bath & Beyond for $4, hoping to lanyard it outside. It's too smooth to just tie a cord around the handle.

And, it's not magnetic & therefore very hard to drill with my vanadium-coated (brass color) steel drill bits:

Persoanlly, I drill small holes first. Then I enlarge the holes to the proper size with a larger "bit".

I simply put some motor oil on the area to keep the tooling cool (mega important) and if I'm using my at home drill press, I follow this chart for RPM rates:

#1 important thing to do is use oil or something similar to lubricate and cool the tooling. Otherwise you run into all types of issues.

Much success.

It's unlikely that annealing with a torch will do much. The overwhelming problem drilling stainless, of the common 300-series, is what Dan said: work-hardening.

With grades 304 and up, the work-hardening effect is fierce. It requires some experience and a steady hand to drill it with a manual-feed drill press. It will work-harden in a fraction of a second and it then becomes problematic whether you can re-start the drill through the work-hardened layer. That's what burns the edges of HSS drills used on stainless more than anything else. It breaks them, too, in sizes of 1/4" or less.

Hi Jeff, Funny you mention your floor-sweeping past, as I also had a summer job at a "plant" filled with metalworking machines and Germans running them (real Germans, with heavy accents).

They 'drilled' .010" holes in jet turbine blades using a machine they called the "EDM" machine. It never once broke a bit because it drilled by automatic feed in a bath of kerosene dialectic simply by shooting electric current through the bit which was merely very close to the steel being 'drilled'.

I think the EDM stood for Electro Dialectric Machining, and the concepts were that the sparks "ate away" the metal.

Needless to say, I didn't bring one home with me...

Hi Jeff, Actually every one of those would work!

You're very clever (we should invite you to our weekly "inventor's lunch" up in Palo Alto on Wednesdays).

I've been needing to buy a bench grinder for years, so, maybe I'll use this as my need-based tooling!

BTW, the chinese-finger-trap seems the most clever!

Oooh, I could have fun making a 'novelty' hanger for that!

Anneal the handle, drill lengthwise, swage or epoxy in a cable loop with a "Remove Before Flight" tag.

Variations on the Hangman's Noose make good decorative tool handle grips with loops.

I was born in Germany. Sorry, no accent left.

Today, they use a laser.

I think you might mean Electrical Discharge Mangling:

During my Cal Poly Pomona daze, part of the general engineering curriculum was to run the prospective engineer through every possible metal working machine available. If they had it, I tried (to destroy) it. My favorite was the submerged arc welder, where I successfully created a hot powdered metal and flux volcano. Another was a rather large spot welder, where I convinced a not very swift student to apply grease to his sheet metal parts before welding. The result was a small grease explosion, and a burn line across his shirt from elbow to elbow. My councilor decided that electronics would be a safer major for me.

Hi Jeff,

Up until you said that, I had simply assumed it was two different components. Looking closely, and snapping a picture in the sunlight, now I'm not so sure. It just might be one piece!

Here is a large photo of the junction between the flat & the round:

Small photo of the same thing:

I don't invent anything. I steal all of my ideas.

You'll also need a left-handed wrench for removing/installing the grinding wheel.

I just noticed the coil cord on the telephone handset. Wrap an old handset coil cord over a hook, around the handle, and add some glue. Totally ugly, but easier than drilling.

Personally, I like the shrinking leather knife handle wrap method mostly because the result will be more artistic than the others.

I have one of those! I've never used it (it came with the bits). I'll see if it works.

It's two pieces with a tack weld at the joint. You can see the puddle of metal in the photo. Also notice that the polishing marks are in different directions on the two parts.

I had to get out a broken grade8 stud that was below the surface of the block on a generator engine and the Dremel Tool made a hole for a screw extractor. A drill bit wouldn't work. ^_^

TDD

I understand your concerns with the work hardening. It can be a difficult problem, but not always impossible. As long as he doesn't break the drill bit in the hole (causing more complications), I believe that he can remove work hardening with heat. He has some advantage in that he's drilling near the end of the rod where it can be easily heated without warping the piece. It could be difficult, but not necessarily impossible. (If the drill bit broke in the hole, I'd weld on a D-ring and cover up my mistake , but then the OP might not have a TIG welder.)

Agree with your comments about the drill bit relief angles, however he probably only needs an 1/8" hole (1/2" dia SS rod on handle of opener).