PCB Drills

A great many holes of very small diameter must be drilled in printed circuit boards (PCBs) used by electronic equipment. Most PCBs are made of highly abrasive fiberglass, which quickly wears steel drills, especially given the hundreds or thousands of holes on most circuit boards. To solve this problem, solid tungsten carbide twist bits, which drill quickly through the board while providing a moderately long life, are almost always used. Carbide PCB bits are estimated to outlast high speed steel bits by a factor of ten or more. Other options that are out on

the market and used in some situation are a diamond drill bit, or a diamond coated drill bit.
Due to the high rotational speeds—these bits are used at 30,000 to 100,000 RPM or even higher —their small size, and the brittleness of the material, even the slightest wobble of an operator's hand will shatter one, as will accidental contact with almost any object. Due to their brittleness these bits cannot be used in a hand drill, and even most moderately expensive drill presses will have too low a speed and too much chuck wobble to use them without breaking them.
Resharpened and easily available PCB Drills have historically been used in many prototyping and home PCB labs, using a high-speed rotary tool (such as a Moto- Tool by Dremel) in a stiff drill-press jig. If used for other materials these tiny drills must be evaluated for equivalent cutting speed vs material resistance to the cut (hardness) as the drill's rake angle and expected feed per revolution are optimised for high-speed automated use on fiberglass PCB substrate.
CHINATUNGSTEN ONLINE has been specialized in manufacturing tungsten products, especially tungsten carbide products for more than 20 years. If you have any inquires concerning the products in this website, please do not hesitate to e-mail us by : sales@chinatungsten.com