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.

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. 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. Drilling through stainless steel is much like drilling through any other type of metal but with a few key differences. There are also other steps to drilling this material that will make the process easier.

Here is the right way to drill stainless steel. 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. The least expensive twist bits are made of high speed steel hss and these basic bits are just fine for most metal drilling tasks. When stainless steel work hardens it becomes very hard and extremely difficult to drill.

Using high speed drill bits or better is mandatory. Stainless is actually a relatively soft metal at least in its initial state. A tool steel that is too soft would immediately overheat. For some jobs you may need to make holes in the metal to achieve the effect you want.

Hymnorq metric m35 cobalt steel extremely heat resistant twist drill bits with straight shank set of 13pcs to cut through hard metals such as stainless steel and cast iron 4 4 out of 5 stars 880 14 99 14. Many people have drilled holes into plain old steel with satisfactory results. These characteristics of stainless steel make it quite difficult to cut or drill. Steel is a common metal used in a number of applications such as appliances architecture and even decoration.