Tritan drills from Rugby-based Mapal Ltd (www.mapal.com) have been complemented by four new designs.

The Tritan-Drill-Uni for machining steels, stainless alloys and cast materials has been further developed to be suitable for ‘universal use’.

New groove profiles improve chip removal, while a new wear-resistant coating increases tool life by up to three times. Meanwhile, the Tritan-Drill-Uni-Plus features an HA shank and is available in diameters from 4 to 20mm and in lengths of 5xD and 8xD as standard.

For machining aluminium and cast materials, Mapal has introduced the new Tritan-Drill-Alu and the Tritan-Drill-Iron.

With new tool geometries, these drills have been configured to offer significant increases in feed rates and drilling performance.

The Tritan-Drill-Alu has a polished groove profile, large chip spaces and a sharp cutting edge for optimum chip formation and reliable chip removal.

The Tritan-Drill-Iron features a corner radius design that optimises the stability and wear-resistance of the cutting edge, while the tool coating used allows a variety of cast materials to be drilled.

Meanwhile, the Tritan-Step-Drill-Steel has been developed for producing stepped bores in tapped drill holes.

Mapal says that until now, only double-edge drills were available for these machining operations, adding that the flat chisel edge in the centre of these types of tool makes them oscillate, resulting in a high load on the cutting edges and guiding chamfers and poor results with regard to circularity and cylindrical form.

The company says the triple-edge technology of Tritan-Step-Drill-Steel drills eradicates this issue, helped by “innovative point thinning and finely ground chip flutes” which ensure that chips are rolled tightly and broken — and can be reliably removed.