Deep hole boring produces a hole whose depth is more than 10x its diameter. Shorter holes can be made with a regular drill bit, but longer holes cannot, because the tooling is not available and concentricity and accuracy become hard to hold.
The process is also known as gun drilling, drilling or boring, with the differences relating to the specific tooling design. Coolant is delivered to the end of the tool to stop it overheating and to flush out the swarf. As the hole can extend to several metres, removing swarf all the way back to the start of the hole is a key challenge.
Deep hole boring at Langley Alloys
We operate our own deep hole borer, capable of creating a hole up to 8" (200mm) in a solid bar over 2m in length, including high-strength alloys such as super duplex stainless steels and nickel alloys. The process can be done in less than one hour.
By undertaking first-stage machining ourselves, we reduce the overall lead time compared with using subcontractors, and cut cost by removing the transport between locations.