Manufacturing companies are under pressure to reduce their production costs while ensuring high component quality and process reliability across a variety of materials and applications. To simplify drilling operations, Sandvik Coromant has expanded its CoroDrill® Dura 462 series with a range of solid carbide deep hole drills. This extends the application possibilities of the series from micro and short hole drilling to applications up to 30×D, allowing more drilling requirements to be covered with just one drill series.
In industries such as general mechanical engineering, the automotive industry, aerospace, the oil and gas industry, as well as pump and valve manufacturing, companies strive to achieve more with fewer tools. Reducing tool inventory, simplifying tool selection, and increasing machine utilization have therefore become central priorities. The goal of companies is to increase their efficiency while controlling costs. Reliability remains crucial – especially in deep hole drilling. Here, tool stability, precision, and chip control can directly influence productivity and profitability.
The new CoroDrill Dura 462 has been specifically developed for these challenges. It is designed for reliable drilling of various materials and combines a robust X2BM geometry with a Zertivo® 2.0 PVD coating and a microcrystalline carbide substrate. This delivers high performance across a wide range of applications. The new range includes drill lengths from 12 to 30×D and complements the existing CoroDrill Dura 462 portfolio. Manufacturing companies now have a unified drilling solution for micro drilling and deep drilling.
The development placed a central focus on process reliability. Deep hole drilling presents various challenges: these include positional accuracy, load and thrust forces, and chip transport. To address these, the drill features an optimized deep hole geometry with refined chip channel design, staggered double guiding phases, double point geometry, tangential cutting radii, and a point angle of 135 degrees. All these features contribute to improving stability, reducing cutting forces, enhancing hole quality, and ensuring longer tool life.
"What we consistently hear from our customers is that process reliability remains one of their top priorities," reports James Thorpe, Global Product Manager at Sandvik Coromant. "At the same time, many companies are not looking for an optimized tool for a single application. They want a solution that delivers reliable results across a wide range of materials and conditions. That’s exactly what the new CoroDrill Dura 462 deep hole drill was developed for."
The CoroDrill Dura 462 enhances process reliability and ensures measurable productivity increases. In field trials with customers, where the deep hole drill was tested against competitors' tools, an average increase in tool life of 45 percent was achieved, alongside a 25 percent increase in productivity. These advantages help manufacturing companies reduce their cost per hole while ensuring consistently high drilling performance across various materials.
Additionally, the new deep hole drill simplifies inventory planning. For applications with a depth-to-diameter ratio of over 15×D, it is recommended to use a corresponding CoroDrill Dura 462 short drill with a depth of 3 or 5×D for pre-drilling. This makes special pre-drills unnecessary. Finally, aligning the diameters of deep hole and short drills within the same series enables an optimized drilling strategy while reducing the required tools.
In addition to performance, aspects of sustainability and operating costs also played an important role in the development. The drill has therefore been designed to be regrindable multiple times without compromising its original performance or diameter. Combined with the extended tool life achieved through geometry, coating, and substrate, the drill helps companies reduce tool consumption, cut costs, and utilize resources more efficiently.
"Every decision in the design of the CoroDrill Dura 462 is based on real conditions in the machining process," explains Cory Carpenter, Global Product and Digital Application Specialist at Sandvik Coromant. "With this latest expansion, manufacturing companies can now handle everything from micro drilling and short drilling to deep hole drilling with a single, proven series of drilling tools. This means fewer decisions in tool selection, reduced complexity, and greater safety in every drilling operation."
Contact:
