Quick holemaking

The design concept of assembled drills with exchangeable solid carbide cutting heads, adopted by ISCAR at the turn of the century, significantly altered the company’s holemaking product program.

As part of this concept, a precise carbide head is mounted in a steel holder using the ‘self-clamping’ principle, which relies on the holder’s elastic deformation without any mechanical clamping means.

This approach is characteristic of various successful ISCAR products, such as the SELF-GRIP and MULTI-MASTER tool lines.

These have substantially improved machining performance and revolutionised traditional perspectives on cutting tool design.

This is complemented with stoppers and locking sections for reliable security.

In the assembled drills with carbide heads, the cutting head has a specially shaped rake surface to optimise chip formation and a centring area to ensure high accuracy.

The drill body is produced from a high-strength steel grade and features the innovative design of the head pocket, helical flutes, and internal channels for coolant supply.

Advancements in technology, particularly in powder metallurgy processes and CNC machining, have made this design feasible.

The concept of assembled drills with carbide heads guarantees several key advantages:

1. With a rigid structure, reliable clamping principle, unique cutting geometry and advanced carbide grade of the heads, the drills guarantee productive results.

This significantly reduces cycle times and enables high-quality holes.

These drills can be used for machining a wide range of materials, including steel, stainless steel, cast iron, titanium and high-temperature alloys.

2. High repeatability and ISCAR’s ‘no-setup-time’ principle promise that a worn head can be replaced without removing the drill from a machine, eliminating additional setup operations and considerably decreasing downtime.

The simple change of the heads makes the drills user-friendly and easy to handle.

3. The drills are available in a wide range of diameters and overall lengths to suit various applications.

4. The use of interchangeable heads diminishes the need for a large drill inventory.

ISCAR’s drills with exchangeable carbide heads provide customers with a valuable tool solution to enhance the profitability of holemaking operations.

Over the past 20 years, these drills have undergone significant changes.

Beginning with the CHAMDRILL family, each new phase in the concept’s enhancement has led to new products that outperform their predecessors.

Today, SUMOCHAM is ISCAR’s most popular family of assembled drills with exchangeable carbide heads and is highly regarded by customers.

The continuous search to increase drilling productivity, mainly when machining materials that produce fine chips, has created the LOGIQ-3-CHAM – a family of three-flute drills that utilise the same self-clamping approach.

ISCAR’s development of carbide-headed drills continues to aspire.

Unsurprisingly, ISCAR’s latest product campaign, LOGIQUICK, has unveiled innovative designs that enrich the existing product families, broaden their scope, and pave the way for new application areas.

The new holder with three flute heads allows a 10:1 drilling depth-to-diameter ratio.

The holder’s main feature is a specific flute design that minimally affects the tool’s structural strength.

Another innovation is the expansion of the LOGIQ-3-CHAM family application to include counterboring.

The specially designed three-flute heads are mounted on existing tools and transformed into highly efficient counterbores.

The unique design features of the heads include a corner chamfer for rapid chipping, specialised deflectors for improved chip formation and a unique margin for enhanced support and guidance.

This significantly boosts performance when machining materials like sticky steel, stainless steel and high-temperature superalloys.

This design facilitates a broad spectrum of counterboring operations, ensuring high-quality holes, even when machining cross-holes with inclined surfaces.

The CHAM-SPADE-IQ is a new family of holemaking tools with exchangeable heads. Introduced as part of the LOGIQUICK, the family provides a solution for drilling steel profile construction beams.

Machining beams often occurs under non-rigid conditions, presenting a significant challenge for manufacturers.

To address this issue, drilling tools must have an adaptive cutting geometry to compensate for the lack of rigidity.

The newly introduced family, dedicated explicitly to profile construction, includes two flute carbide drilling heads and reinforced steel holders.

The heads feature a specific self-centring cutting edge for secure hole penetration and sharp corners to prevent deformation.

The holders’ durable structure maximises the tools’ dynamic stability when drilling at a depth-to-diameter ratio of up to 5.

New drills with MULTI-MASTER adaptations that carry exchangeable carbide heads essentially serve as a ‘bridge’, connecting the successful SUMOCHAM and MULTI-MASTER families.

The drills are a component of a versatile modular tool assembly that allows the mounting of drilling heads on a wide range of MULTI-MASTER tools.

This facilitates an easy and quick change of the heads and the drill bodies. Moreover, the modular concept provides straightforward customisation and flexibility regarding overall length and diameter and finding the optimal tool configuration.

It’s worth noting that the holemaking innovations in the LOGIQUICK campaign aren't solely represented by assembled tools with exchangeable heads.

Several products of another design concept can also be highlighted.

The three-flute flat-bottom solid carbide drill with internal coolant channels is one such product.

The drill features a small isle for improved penetration, wavy cutting edges for assured chip control, an optimised core diameter to increase tool rigidity, and narrow wiper sections to reduce friction.

This improves surface finish and combines with an internal coolant supply that extends tool life and improves chip evacuation.

These incredible attributes contribute to the promising prospects of this product line.

In the boring line, a new series of boring heads with extra fine digital adjustment has replaced the existing heads with an MB connection.

In the milling line, the portfolio has been enhanced with the addition of the

The QUICK-D-MILL is a family of multi-functional indexable cutters.

These versatile ‘all-in-one’ cutters are suitable for various machining applications, embracing the milling of shoulders, slots, and pockets and drilling flat-bottom holes.

The overview of the mentioned products highlights that ISCAR’s focus on holemaking continues to drive its development efforts.

With the metalworking industry seeking solutions to enhance holemaking performance, ISCAR is confident that its latest LOGIQUICK drilling developments will effectively meet the industry’s demands.