What can users expect for drilling tool life?
John Depies, Sandvik Coromant: The drilling tool life is still in experimental stages, so I would have to say that I don’t really have a good answer for that compared to the other types of materials we use currently. What I’ve found with tool life in some of the drilling that I’ve done is you’ll see a 10 or 20 percent reduction in tool life. But typically, most of the drilling is not for a long duration. So with good coolant supply, you will still take a bit of a tool life hit, but not too severe. And there are some geometries being developed specifically for CGI. One of the most radical is one where the corners are radiused. The problem with that is you still have to generate a pilot hole for it, so it’s maybe not the most economical situation. Mostly in your general purpose drilling it’s not going to make that big of a difference.
