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 hole-making product program. In 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, which have not only substantially improved machining performance, but also revolutionized traditional perspectives on cutting tool design.
In the assembled drills with carbide heads, the cutting head has a specially shaped rake surface to optimize chip formation, a centring area to ensure high accuracy, with stoppers and locking sections for reliable security. The holder – the drill body – that is produced from a high-strength steel grade, features the innovative design of the head pocket, helical flutes and internal channels for coolant supply. The advancement in technology, particularly in powder metallurgy processes and CNC machining, has made this design feasible.
The concept of assembled drills with carbide heads guarantees several key advantages:
- Due to its 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.
- 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 easy to handle and user-friendly.
- The drills are available in a wide range of diameters and overall lengths to suit various applications.
- 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 hole-making 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 for a way to increase drilling productivity, particularly when machining materials that produce fine chips, has resulted in the creation of LOGIQ-3-CHAM – a family of three-flute drills that utilize 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 not only enrich the existing product families and broaden their scope but also pave the way for new areas of application.
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 transform them into highly efficient counterbores. The unique design features of the heads, including a corner chamfer for rapid chipping, specialized deflectors for improved chip formation, and a unique margin for enhanced support and guidance, significantly boost performance when machining materials like sticky steel, stainless steel, and high-temperature superalloys (HTSA). 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 hole-making tools with exchangeable heads. Introduced as part of the LOGIQUICK, the family provides a solution for drilling steel profile construction beams. Machining beams often take place under non-rigid technological conditions, presenting a significant challenge for manufacturers. To address this issue, it is crucial that drilling tools have an adaptive cutting geometry to compensate for the lack of rigidity. The newly introduced family, specifically dedicated 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 durable structure of the holders maximizes the dynamic stability of the tools 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. These drills are a component of a versatile modular tool assembly which allows mounting drilling heads on a wide range of MULTI-MASTER tools facilitating not only an easy and quick change of the heads but also of the drill bodies.
Moreover, the modular concept provides straightforward customization and flexibility regarding overall length, diameter and finding the optimal tool configuration.
It’s worth noting that the hole-making innovations in the LOGIQUICK campaign are not solely represented by assembled tools with exchangeable heads. Several products of another design concept can also be highlighted. One such product is the three-flute flat-bottom solid carbide drill with internal coolant channels. The drill features a small isle for improved penetration, wavy cutting edges for assured chip control, an optimized core diameter to increase tool rigidity and narrow wiper sections to reduce friction for a surface finish in combination with 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 QUICK-D-MILL – a family of multi-functional indexable cutters. These versatile “all-in-one” cutters are suitable for a wide range of machining applications, embracing milling of shoulders, slots, pockets, as well as drilling flat-bottom holes.
The overview of the mentioned products highlights that ISCAR’s focus on hole-making continues to drive their development efforts. With the metalworking industry seeking solutions to enhance hole-making performance, ISCAR is confident that their latest LOGIQUICK drilling developments will effectively meet the industry’s demands.
For more information, please contact ISCAR South Africa (PTY) LTD – Tel: 011 997-2700.
