0.15mm hole

[beemanuk]

Looking for some help i need to make a very small hole in silver or stainless steel of 0.15mm
Not very thick steel or silver only around 0.5-0.7mm thick. have attached a pic of what im needing. Im thinking it may be better being done by laser rather than trying to drill. If anyone out there can can help12141

[CJ57]

I’ve drilled very fine holes in the past and found it best done by hand with a pin chuck or a small Archimedes. Haven’t done it in a while but it is possible. I would go and look at my fine drill collection but they are imperial and not metric so that’s how long it’s been!

[ps_bond]

Even though it's "only" .5-.7mm thick, that's still more than 3 diameters of the drill bit, so you're into deep hole drilling. I don't think I've any drill bits smaller than 0.3mm and they're quite twitchy in use; very easy to break. I don't think it's something I'd particularly want to tackle hand drilling, I'd need a press at the least (and woe betide if the bit breaks in the piece).

If you've got the option of laser drilling, I'd do that - but be aware of the HAZ, especially on stainless.

[CJ57]

I have no experience of stainless steel so I can only speak from my experience of drilling by hand on silver. Until I bought my oroxxon only a few years back I’d done all my drilling by hand so it depends how proficient you get at something

[ps_bond]

I've got to ask - where did you find 0.15mm drill bits? Even making them from needles I haven't gone that fine.

[CJ57]

I would have bought them from Temples in Edinburgh back in the day. No Cookson or any other tool company in the 70s/80s

Apologies. I had to go and look for them so that I could measure in metric sizing. The finest I can find are 0.48 or No71 as sold

[josef1]

You can go down to 0.01 mm in tapered milling cutters you could write a toolpath to cut that hole with a small included angle If the plate wasn't too thick and Cnc it from both sides but would have to be done with a small step down and I wouldn't fancy it in stainless. laser is defiantly an option if you can get it down that small. I'm interested what's it for? :