Reaming a Hole: Tools and Technical Solutions

Boring a hole is much more than simple drilling? Actually it's not that way, or rather: they are two different activities that you can obviously do well thanks to the tools in our catalog. The fundamental difference between these activities is simple.

If in the first case we only refer to the action necessary to drill a surface, with boring we expand this work so as to remove part of the material with extreme precision. Do you want to explore techniques and tools to exploit?

What does it mean to bore a hole, definition

Hole boring is a mechanical machining process that is used to finish and adjust the size of a hole on different materials, such as metal. What are the characteristics of this operation? The objective of someone who wants to bore a cylindrical hole is to obtain particularly precise shapes while maintaining a smooth and uniform surface.

What's the difference with rough boring?

The latter is a material removal technique for roughing and not for finishing, it does not provide final results similar to boring. Which represents the only solution when we look for very refined profiles. Boring with numerically controlled machinery is the best solution when we need maximum precision and roughness below 0.2 micrometers

What are the tools for boring metal?

The boring process can be performed by hand or with a specific tool. For example, you can use a drill or a lathe. Industrial precision work is performed with a boring machine and cutting tools called boring bars.

The bits used to perform this work of extreme precision change based on requirements. In all cases, however, they perform a specific task: they rotate removing excess material from the hole. The material of these bits for precision work?

Better to rely on HSS-CO, high speed steel ground with 5% cobalt to increase toughness on more resistant materials (here's a guide to explore the topic). Hand boring bars are used to operate on small pieces while maintaining good precision. While machine boring bars are used for production work on large quantities of pieces.

How to bore a hole in metal

The first point to respect to bore a hole and remove part of the material to enlarge a cylindrical portion: prepare the metal piece to be worked. You must secure it to the workbench or boring machine using clamps or other equipment.

Stability during machining is fundamental. Then you need to choose the boring bit that must be able to respect the tables that regulate the amount of material to be removed. Each bit should have these values highlighted, it is essential.

The work of hole boring is based precisely on the maximum precision of excess metal removal. You must also evaluate whether to buy models for finishing or not through holes. To improve the quality of machining and increase the life of the tools, it is important to lubricate the metal piece and the boring bar with a specific liquid for these operations.

The Krino boring bars, some useful solutions

Much depends on what is needed and how to proceed to obtain the final result. For example, to proceed by hand you can opt for boring bars in HSS with cylindrical shank 29001. In these cases the excess metal recommended for export is expressed in the measurement of 0.2 millimeters, here are the reference tables. Maximum 0.4. The difference depends on the starting diameter.