By Steve Bush 15th February 2022
Lidl, that ephemeral stocker of eclectic things, is selling pcb drills at the moment.
At least, my local one is.
They are branded ‘Parkside’ (a lidl own-brand) and are in packs of 10 assorted sizes, for £4.99 per pack.
Their shelf position suggested to me that they are not this week’s stock.
I could find three ranges, each in 0.1mm steps:
They are most quickly differentiated by the narrow coloured stripe running down on edge of the pack (dark blue in photo).
I have no idea what the metal is, nor have I had a chance to try them, yet. The wording is: ‘for printed circuit boards, plastic or acrylic glass’ max rotation speed 10,000rpm – does the speed give any clue to material?
They are marked with ‘OWIM’ and their size on the plastic collars. Web searching ‘owim’ does not yield much – it seems it might be a company with headquarters in the same building at Lidl’s in Neckarsulm, so it might be a subsidiary – in short, is says nothing I can deduce about the drill material.
Btw, if you are not used to using these things, the small ones have to be run very fast or they break – don’t ask me how I know…
Tagged with: EinW Engineer in Wonderland PCB tools
Hello Steve, I usually find that if I go too slow then the cutting edges snag in the material and the drill breaks. And if I go too fast then everything overheats and the drill breaks. With fixed gear ratios the correct selection can be difficult. What I usually do if I have a lot of holes to drill is to go a bit faster than I feel comfortable with and pause at the ‘move’ height between each hole with the drill still rotating to let it cool down. Most of the time it may not be necessary to do that but the time lost is probably about equal to the time lost in changing a broken bit for yet another new one. Or, can you program pauses into the CNC machine? Fibreglass boards tend to make the drills go blunt after a surprisingly short time, and then they break. Sorry to be so pessimistic… On the up side, making drills rotate as fast as possible means that gyroscopic forces and coriolis effects tend to keep things in a straight line even if your slides are sloppy and your bearings are, erm, not quite in pristine condition. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it…
Afternoon Luke Hear Thanks, I will rember the pause technique for next time. How fast are you driving them? I had luck at ~6,000rpm, into non-glass pcb – nice neat 0.8mm holes. (I have been avoiding FR4 so as not to have to deal with glass dust) My (beginner) opinions was that faster rpm would have been OK, but faster plunge rate would have been v risky. Were your blunted drills made from carbide or HSS?
I was more surprised to see a Plasma Cutter in the forthcoming offers sheet. Every home should have one 🙂
Morning Duncan You win 🙂 a plasma cutter is indeed an exotic beast – although I am increasingly seeing them used instead of a hacksaw on YouTube maker videos – more sparks means more views, perhaps. Just saw this in the footnotes for it: First, it gets a three year warranty – someone has confidence in it. Second: “This Class A welding device is not intended for use in residential areas where the power is supplied via a public low-voltage supply system. Both conducted and radiated interference can make it difficult to ensure electromagnetic compatibility in these areas.”
What’s your preferred drill to use with these bits? I’ve got one such bit that I use with a dremel too. It works adequately, but I’m just drilling a couple of holes usually. In one lab where I used to work, they had a proper small drill press that ran at high speed. Definitely useful if you need to drill a few dozen holes!
Good morning Mr Kurt It is amazing what peple achieve with a Dremel 🙂 I seldom try to use fine drills hand-held – I am just not steady enough. For equipment, a long time ago I bought a kit of (allegedly) re-sharpend crbide pcb drills, which I use with an ancient Precision Petite P2 hobby-grade high-speed drill (like a Dremel) this was a present in my youth along with a simple mini drill press. I now also have the 6,000rpm spindle motor/drill that is part of the 1810 Pro cnc (watching the little cnc, which only cost just over £100, drill a pattern of holes is a bit like magic). The new spindle for the 1810 Pro will (hopefully) take this up to 10,000rpm. Even though I owned the P2, I foolishly tried some carbide pcb drills in a normal drill press and quickly broke them due to the low speed 🙁
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