By forsaking the traditional drill point for a specially designed 180deg point, WTX-180 drills from Sheffield-based WNT (UK) Ltd (www.wnt.com) can drill through-holes, flat-bottomed holes, counter-bored holes and cross-holes with ease.

Moreover, they can drill directly into inclined faces of up to 45deg — and they have no issues with exiting holes on curved or angled surfaces.

WTX-180 drills achieve this capability by virtue of the square approach of the new four-facet geometry and the precision-ground K-land on the outer edge of the flute.

The accuracy of this cutting edge — combined with highly polished flutes — ensures a stable cutting action, allowing H7-tolerance holes to be produced by the drill alone.

Furthermore, achieving high levels of finish and positional accuracy does not compromise the cutting data: when machining steel (<800N/mm2) with a 10mm-diameter drill, a surface speed of 80m/min without through-coolant (up to 120m/min with through-coolant) and a feed rate of 0.18mm/rev are recommended.

Further productivity gains are made by the elimination of pre-drilling operations, where traditionally a slot drill would have been used to start a hole on an inclined face.

WTX-180 drills are available in two standard lengths — 3¥ diameter and 5x diameter — with size increments of 0.1mm between 3 and 12mm and a selection of popular sizes between 12 and 20mm.

Users can maximise the performance and accuracy of the WTX-180 by combining it with WNT’s Centro-P collet chuck system.