Drilling of FRP Plates

Long ago I worked with some Torlon/Carbon composite and the stuff is just hell on any kind of cutting tools. Diamond tooling works best, but it still wears out rather quickly. Contact some cutting tool manufacturers for recommendations specific to the material you are drilling.
  www.iscar.com
  www.morsecuttingtools.com
  www.ingersoll-imc.com

If you have to process more than a dozen or so pieces, I recommend having it done with a water-jet.

FRP=???

milo

Fiberglass Reenforced Plastic

Could you be more specific than FRP. What resin and what fiber? What size hole? What speed and feed.

One issue maybe that you are using a drill jig. When you use a drill jig for composite materials you are pulling the chips up through the bushings with the drill. This causes extra wear on the drill and the bushing. The drill wears out faster and so does the bushing allowing the drill to wobble and make the hole out of round. If this is production it should be done on a CNC machine. This will allow you to control the feed, speed and amount of peck in the drill cycle. A vacuum to take the chips and dust away from the hole and drill would also be helpful.

To the list of suppliers already mentioned I would add Kennametal. I know they make diamond PVD coated drills. You should be able however to get reasonable results with even an uncoated carbide drill if used properly.

as above "FRP ???"

Or are you talking about FR4 or G10 grade fiberglass laminated sheet?

for FR4 or G10 (G10 is a grade of fiberglass, based on its electrical/insulating and stiffness charactistics) I use Tungsten Carbide drill bits from HPTEC or Kemmer Prazision (Transunited in Qld. Australia)

If you go to the HPTEC web site here =>

http://www.hptec.de/HPTec/html/prod.php?SIT=2100&PHPSESSID=5e8a78b31ed75e30fd30d7248b5af42c

then select "Parameter recommendations, they will give you your F/S (Feed/Speed) tables for different materials..

HSS is totally useless for FR4/G10, not sure about straight Carbide, but Tungsten Carbide cutters/drills, but even with these, you can generally only get a few hundred hits.

The worst I have had to drill was 5mm G10 using 0.25mm drills, breaking drill bits in the holes, I had to start again.

Drill specs were 120k RPM, my drill could only do 60k RPM.

Into these holes were mounted spring loaded probes (barrel with a spring loaded pin, you should have seen the wound spring in those babies)

I used to work at a sign shop that made fiber optic cross walk signals out of fiber glass and found that we could use a punch press with more accuracies and speed even in 1/4 inch thick glass with Little break out after some experimenting with punch sises

don't know if this will work for you but got me a nice raise good luck

When I was employed at the shipyard we were contructing Avenger Class Minesweepers.

We were cutting FRP on our CNC routers. FRP is very a abrasive. I do not know what the form or shape the FRP is, but a Waterjet would work Fantastic if it is flatwork.

phoenix911

I don't know enough about your process to really know if this is the actual problem, but it could be that your feed rate is not steady enough and you are:

1. Overheating the tip of the tool at times.

2. "spiraling" or "screwing" into the work piece too quickly which creates the oval hole.

Can you add a feed control to the process or is there one in place?

what type of machine is doing the drilling? Hand drill, drill press, Bridgeport, automatic machine, CNC, etc???

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