Kennametal’s HPX Drill Designed for Increased Tool Life, Productivity

Kennametal’s HPX solid carbide drill is designed for high-performance, large-volume drilling in steel. Designed to quickly and efficiently create holes up to 8xD in any ISO-P steel material, the HPX drill is said to provide up to twice the tool life and three times the productivity compared to competing products, even in dry or minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) applications.

The drill’s design includes a small corner chamfer and straightened cutting edges to help extend the tool’s life. Together with the rounded margin lands running down the length of the flutes, this serves to stabilize the drill while reducing friction.

The drill also features optimized edge preparation with a gentle hone that further reduces the friction that leads to built-up edge, as do the tool’s highly polished flutes. Couple that with a carbide grade designed specifically for steel—KCP15B—and a multilayer AlTiN coating, and the HPX drill can last longer, generate lower forces and make better quality holes.

Special gashing on the HPX drill improves chip formation and curls a smaller chip. The material-specific HPX point geometry creates significantly lower cutting forces, which is well suited for machines with lower spindle power, unstable cutting conditions or less-rigid workpiece clamping. A continuous cross section makes the HPX drill more resistant against tool breakage, and the highly polished chip flutes ensure superior chip evacuation, the company says.

The drill also comes equipped with a leakproof MQL interface that meets DIN 6535 and 69090-03 standards to enable efficient chip evacuation along with low-friction cutting for dry cutting or MQL systems.