Chessington-based deep-hole drilling specialist Mollart Engineering (www.mollart.com) has extended its support operation for BTA drilling by creating a BTA Application Centre at its headquarters, with two regionally based ‘local’ specialists based in the Midlands and the North (the latter will provide support to customers in Scotland).

The new centre, which is part of Mollart’s strategic future development programme under ‘Process is our Business’, is supported by tooling partner Germany-based Botek, a world leader in solid-carbide deep-hole drilling tooling and systems.

Chris Barker, Mollart’s director of tooling, said: “Correct application support for BTA — otherwise known as the STS (single tube system) deep-hole drilling proces — enables users to benefit from its distinct advantages, allowing a single pass to achieve hole size with higher penetration rates than with gun drilling, and it can be applied across a wide range of materials.

It also has the advantage of providing high orders of size control, surface finish, hole straightness and bore roundness, with excellent chip control and extended tool life when used with high-quality inserts developed for deep-hole drilling.”

The BTA system can also be applied to larger-diameter holes or bores where high-pressure coolant is contained within the pressure head, with the chips fed back through the bore of the drill tube.

The Mollart Botek BTA range of drill heads is available in diameters up to 1,000mm, and it includes solid drill heads, counterbore and trepanning heads.

Dedicated BTA specialist engineers are based at Chessington, and they are also involved in application and machine tool build process development. On-site are machines dedicated to BTA drilling and used for sub-contract production in particular, in support of customers in the oil and gas, subsea and nuclear sectors.

Two Mollart machines were recently installed in Mexico for drilling cooling holes in moulds; the application team were able to develop the process and increase hole penetration rates by 500% (compared to existing ‘proven’ methods).