Chessington-based Mollart Engineering has completed a £900,000 order for an eight-spindle gun-drilling machine that will be used to produce multiple holes in tubular dies (the latter will then be used to extrude wooden pellets for the bio-mass industry).

The machine, shown in final assembly, will be capable of producing holes between 2 and 10mm in diameter and up to 150mm deep in nickel-chromium steel die material.

The user inputs the number and size of holes required per row and the number of rows per die; from this data, Mollart’s software calculates the pitch centre of each hole.

It will also add a soft drill entry to the drilling cycle, switch the feed to high-penetration drilling rates and then return to a soft exit at breakthrough to maximise tool life and restrict burring. The machine incorporates high-pressure coolant with filtration, pressure monitoring and individual thrust monitoring for each drill.