OCEAN PENETRATOR DRILL BIT

Drill Bit for Structural Steel - TEST RESULTS!

Ocean Penetrator Cobalt Drill Results - 450 holes in one hour!

On August 11th 2006 we ran a trial with the NEW Ocean PENETRATOR Drill bits using an 18 month old Ocean Avenger at Florida Welding in Fort Lauderdale Florida.

1. Ocean Avenger Data

Our customer kindly allowed Ocean machinery a couple of hours to run our trials in between regular productions. We set up the Avenger as per normal operation - nothing special was done to the machine

• we ran the Ocean Avenger at all the default speeds except for the feed rate - we upped the drill feed rate to 110%

• We wanted an overall feed rate of 7.1" per minute (120%)

• We ended up at 7.01" per minute (110%)

• Running the machine at 120% did not improve the drilling time so we kept it at 110%

2. Beam and Hole Data

We used customer supplied drops from his bone-yard. We drilled holes as close as possible to reduce the amount of steel needed to conduct the durability test.

• Used a 15ft long W16x31 beam

• Drilled in Web - nominal 1/4" thick - this beam was closer to 5/16" thick

• Used a 13/16" dia NEW Ocean Penetrator Cobalt Drill bit

• Drilled columns of 8 holes spaced 1.5" apart

• Drilled rows 1.75" apart

3. Ocean PENETRATOR - Drill Point Geometry

1. Ocean PENETRATOR COBALT Twist Drill Bits - Taper Shank

The new Ocean Penetrator Drill bit arrives from the factory complete with a 175 degree point with a raised tip and split point.

• We felt that the factory tip was too pronounced so prior to drilling we sharpened the drill bit to reduce the tip height.

• We resharpened to our standard technique - a 175 degrees with raised tip.

4. Test Method

We programmed 500 holes in the web of the beam using the Peddimat software on the Ocean Avenger. When we hit the cycle start button we started a clock. We noted the times to reach different hole milestones - 200, 300 , 400, 1-hour and 500 holes. The Ocean Avenger ran continuously without stopping. The drill bit was not sharpened during the trial.
 

5. Test Results

The Penetrator Cobalt drill entirely exceed our expectations.

We had only programmed 500 holes as we originally anticipated that we would have to resharpen the drill before it had completed drilling 500 holes. In fact we drilled over 500 holes without resharpening - the drill bit was still drilling through the web in around 5.5 - 6 seconds - the same speed at which it was drilling the first hole.

We don't know exactly how many more holes we could have drilled before resharpening but from the drill times we anticipate that we could have drilled at least 100 more holes.

In any case 500 holes per sharpening is a superb number and should give the user in excess of 50,000 holes per drill bit (very conservatively assuming 100 sharpenings)

6. Times

We noted the times taken to reach each major milestone

• 200 holes - 27 min 45 secs

• 300 holes - 40 min 10 secs

• 400 holes - 53 min 30 secs

• One hour - 450 holes

• 500 holes - 66 min 50 secs - 8 secs hole including positioning (6 seconds per hole drill time)

CONCLUSION

From the test results it is pretty easy to conclude that

• The Ocean Avenger CNC Beam Drill Line is an incredibly efficient drilling machine. It drilled 450 holes drilled in one hour.

• Those same 450 holes would have taken well over 35 man hours to do manually using a tape, framing square, chalk and center punch and a mag drill.

• The NEW Ocean Penetrator Cobalt Drill Bit for Structural Steel is a fantastic drill bit - not only for the Ocean Avenger, but for all beam drill lines.

• To get in excess of 500 holes per sharpening is a significant achievement, and dramatically reduces the cost per hole drilled.

• None of the holes need any grinding on the exit of the hole, this has a dramatic saving in non-value-added labor and consumable cost.

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