Drilling is an essential part of civilized life and it is an activity we simply cannot do without. It is thus essential to understand how to drill correctly in the right place. This will ensure that we avoid complications that may arise as a result of wrong drilling as well as ensuring that we do not damage our tools and the materials we are working with. Besides ensuring that we do not incur losses from choosing the wrong drilling techniques, safety is also considered as a benefit of understanding drills and bits.
Drilling can be done to any material and thus, the question that you should concern yourself with when choosing a bit is the material you are drilling. Almost any bit can be chosen to drill a soft material; however, the same cannot be said of brittle and hard things such as acrylic and glass which often need one to choose specifically-designed bits. Bits also differ from each other further in that they are designed differently. Some are designed to cut rough holes while others tend to lean more on clean holes as well as prioritizing accuracy and finishing. Choosing the best drilling tools to go hand in hand with your chosen bit is perhaps the last important decision you have to make before beginning to drill.
Before you begin drill bits, you should ensure that you avoid breaking a drill bit quickly by ensuring that the bit is fixed straight. This precaution can be carried out by running the drill but without drilling a hole. If the bit turns into a blurry cone or does not remain straight as it spins this would be an indicator that the bits is not straight and should thus be fixed again.
The design of most drill bits is that they spin clockwise but this is not much of a problem as a result of the presence of reversible hand drivers. You need to make sure that your shank bit will perfectly fit into the drill chuck. The shank bits are mostly either hexagon in shape or rounded. This makes the former better for drilling hard materials as they are hard to come off, while the latter is much more reliable. The speed of the drill is another thing that one needs to take into consideration especially when working on hard materials and using large bits. This demands that you practice to slow down when signs such as the presence of discolored chips and smoke become visible to you. However, most drills will not provide sufficient power when they slow down.
As a precaution, most tools you are dealing with require that you add just a little steady pressure instead of leaning in with your whole weight. If you find yourself doing the later and find that the tool is not doing most of the work by itself, then it means you are either using the wrong kind of bit to cut the material or the bit has become dull. While there is some exception of tools that do indeed demand pressure such as large forstner bits one should generally observe the above-stated precautions for other tools.
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