Drilling Through Stainless Steel Plate

What stainless tends to do is work harden fairly quickly when heated and drilling at high speed creates a lot of heat.

Drilling through stainless steel plate.

By using the right tools prepping the metal and drilling the hole you can easily work a drill through any piece of steel you need. Here is the right way to drill stainless steel. Many people have drilled holes into plain old steel with satisfactory results. Certainly of all the metals out there stainless steel is the one that seems to cause most problems for people when it comes to drilling.

Stainless steel is a very hard material and therefore difficult to cut therefore the tool steel of the twist drill should be made of hsse co 5 5 cobalt content hsse co 8 8 cobalt content or solid carbide. For some jobs you may need to make holes in the metal to achieve the effect you want. Because so many people ask how to drill through stainless steel we decided to dedicate a page to this topic. There are also other steps to drilling this material that will make the process easier.

If you ll be drilling a lot of holes or need to drill through hard abrasive metals like stainless steel or cast iron spend a couple bucks more for black oxide or a cobalt steel drill bit for metal. Steel is a common metal used in a number of applications such as appliances architecture and even decoration. When stainless steel work hardens it becomes very hard and extremely difficult to drill. Stainless is actually a relatively soft metal at least in its initial state.

The least expensive twist bits are made of high speed steel hss and these basic bits are just fine for most metal drilling tasks. These characteristics of stainless steel make it quite difficult to cut or drill. Stainless steel also known as inox steel is an alloy of steel with a minimum of around 10 5 chromium based on its mass it is known for its corrosion resistance high heat resistance and high ductility. A tool steel that is too soft would immediately overheat.