In Russia’s steel fabrication, construction machinery and heavy equipment manufacturing sectors, drilling in structural steel is a daily core operation. Many plants are equipped with capable vertical machining centers, drill-tap centers and radial drills. Yet as soon as they work on thick plates, beams or high-strength structural steels, cutting parameters are pushed to very low levels: spindle speeds are conservative, feeds are reduced, and machines are constantly busy but overall productivity remains disappointing.

One major reason is that the drills in use are not optimized for structural steel conditions. General-purpose HSS twist drills may perform acceptably on mild steel, but when faced with higher-strength, lower-ductility structural steels with poorer heat dissipation, problems appear quickly: excessive heat, accelerated wear, poor chip evacuation. To cope, users fall back on “safe but very slow” parameters and frequent tool changes, effectively wasting machine capacity.

A “Steel-Oriented Twist Drill” Approach

To truly unlock machine performance, the drilling platform must be redesigned around steel, not treated as a compromise for all materials. A typical approach includes:

• Using DIN338 jobber-length straight-shank drills to ensure consistent dimensions, tolerances and shank forms;

• Selecting HSS-M35 cobalt high-speed steel as the substrate to improve hot hardness and wear resistance for structural and alloy steel drilling;

• Applying a steam-tempered Black & Gold oxide layer to enhance lubricity and chip evacuation and reduce built-up edge and dry friction;

• Optimizing point geometry, web thinning and flute design specifically for structural steels to reduce drilling resistance.

On top of this, a dedicated cutting data table for structural steel needs to be established, allowing Russian users to safely raise speeds and feeds without sacrificing tool life.

Typical Steel-Oriented Drill Configuration

How Russian Plants Can Implement This Approach

For Russian manufacturers, implementing a steel-oriented drill platform can be broken down into several steps:

1. Start with the most problematic structural steel operations
   Prioritize the thick plates, beams and high-strength parts where burning, chipping and low productivity are most painful.

2. Manage cutting data by platform, not by brand
   Build a parameter table around the “DIN338 + HSS-M35 + Black & Gold” platform, instead of tuning settings for each individual brand or drill batch.

3. Evaluate cost per hole, not just drill price
   Track holes per drill, tool-change downtime and rework rates to compare the platform-based solution with the previous ad-hoc approach.

Once the drill platform and cutting data are rebuilt around structural steel, the same machine can deliver a much higher, more predictable output on Russian steel components—finally letting the machine work at the level it was designed for.