Cutting Oil For Drilling Stainless Steel

A go to material in transportation consumer goods food production construction and a variety of other industries stainless steel plates and tubes are popular work materials for drilling and tapping applications.

Cutting oil for drilling stainless steel.

Stainless steel actually is designed to bend a little bit before it breaks. Other metals like brass and aluminum are easy to machine with general purpose oils. Non corrosive and easy to clean stainless steel is revered both for its strength and its appearance. Where tough low machinability metals are involved you will need highly additized cutting oil with excellent extreme pressure ep and anti weld.

Here is the right way to drill stainless steel. Stainless steel exotic alloys and very hard metals demand a very high level of performance from the cutting oil. The key is keeping the production of friction generated heat to a minimum either with cooling pastes and liquids or believe it or not plain ol water. This characteristic makes it challenging to break the chip which is especially important in a drilling operation because the chips need to be broken and evacuated from the hole as quickly as possible to reduce the chance of recutting.

While a common material drilling and tapping stainless. Drilling holes even in exceptionally hard stainless is fairly easy even if you have comparatively simple low tech tools. Makes the drilling much easier and greatly extends the length of time between sharping drill bits. I used to use motor oil to keep from burning up the drill bits but this cutting oil works so much better.

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