Self Feed Drill Basics

Self feed drills are the answer for your high volume drilling needs. These drills use a built in pneumatic cylinder with self-contained hydraulic feed control available and precision spindle. The spindle is driven one of many different motor choices. This allows us to provide self feed and mechanical rotation. This also allows feed automation for one or many drills at the same time for “daisy-chain” operations where extremely high volume applications exist. Manual or PLC controlled units are standard.

The principle is displayed below:

Some Typical Self Feeding Drill Applications are:

  • Multi Hole Drilling – Drill one or many holes simultaneously. By using staggered spindle lengths and other “tricks of the trade”, there are a nearly limitless number of possibilities for an automated or even a drill press / mill set-up.
  • Highly Precise Hole Drilling – AutoDrills, once set-up, precisely repeat the operation over and over again. If extremely high tolerance holes are needed, drill bushings or other methods can be incorporated.
  • Better Than a CNC – Use AutoDrills instead of an expensive or complicated CNC. This can replace expensive CNC equipment and even reduce operator training costs. Because AutoDrills can be linked together or set up at any angle, they can often process a part much faster than a CNC can.
  • How About Multi-Step Processes – AutoDrills are simply and easily automated to sequence multiple operations. What this means is that you can drill a hole from one side of a part, and then ream and deburr it from the other resulting in less set up steps.
  • Deep Hole Peck Drilling – AutoDrill peck controls automate this tedious operation. Within reason, AutoDrill can perform a deep hole process with very simple and totally automated machinery all provided at a great cost from a USA based supplier.
  • Small Hole Drilling – Because the selffeeder AutoDrills can be equipped with a low cost, highly reliable and accurate hydraulic feed control, we can often perform a small hole drilling process with an industrial rated drill. This means less down time, less broken tooling and more accurate holes for you and your customers.
  • Hard To Reach Drilling Surfaces – We can offer compact drills, off-set drill heads, reverse stroke drill heads, custom housings and spindles as well as many other options to make sure that your process is performed reliably and simply each and every time.

Automation controls are also available for the self-feeding drills we offer. We use very basic and highly reliable valves and other components to make sure of two very important factors:

  1. Down time is minimized when an error occurs and something breaks. Everything is componentized so that you do not have to disassemble the entire unit to replace a low cost part.
  2. Simple design features are incorporated so that even on our most robust units, a repair can often be made by someone with basic mechanical skills.

Our goal is to keep you up and running as often as possible for as long as possible. Built AutoDrill tough, the units are rated for 24/7 use in the harshest conditions out there.

Custom controls and options are available to meet most every need. We specialize in making the right machine for you each and every time. All machines are based on standard, off-the-shelf parts stocked right here in our facility.

We offer free basic application and engineering assistance.  Please check out the rest of our web site for some of our many successful projects.

Please CONTACT US to discuss your application and receive prompt product cost, literature and technical help.

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