I have just watched a prog on digital tv (Ideal world) and they were
demonstrating a drill set that can drill through wood, plaster, brick,
concrete, tiles, mild steel, cast iron and bricks. See www.idealworld.tv

They were saying that they were a tipped drill and the tip was
cryogenically frozen cobalt. Now I have been around drills all my
working life and I can't understand how a drill can keep an edge on
these materials. They did demonstrate what would happen with this drill,
compared to a carbide tipped drill, by pushing it tip first into a
normal carbide grinding wheel. Their drill formed a groove in the wheel,
the carbide tipped drill had its tip ground back.

Has anyone come across them before?

Dave

Dave explained on 20/12/2009 :
They did demonstrate what would happen with this drill, compared to a carbide
tipped drill, by pushing it tip first into a normal carbide grinding wheel.
Their drill formed a groove in the wheel, the carbide tipped drill had its
tip ground back.

Dunno if they are actually any good, but....

Any form of carbide will make a groove in a normal (gray or white)
grinding wheel. A green wheel is needed to sharpen carbide.

--
Regards,
Harry (M1BYT) (L)
http://www.ukradioamateur.co.uk

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Dave wrote:

I have just watched a prog on digital tv (Ideal world) and they were
demonstrating a drill set that can drill through wood, plaster, brick,
concrete, tiles, mild steel, cast iron and bricks. See
www.idealworld.tv
They were saying that they were a tipped drill and the tip was
cryogenically frozen cobalt. Now I have been around drills all my
working life and I can't understand how a drill can keep an edge on
these materials. They did demonstrate what would happen with this
drill, compared to a carbide tipped drill, by pushing it tip first
into a normal carbide grinding wheel. Their drill formed a groove in
the wheel, the carbide tipped drill had its tip ground back.

Has anyone come across them before?

Dave


You often see them demonstrated at Ideal Home exhibitions and Tool Fairs
etc. - where they invariably show them drilling through hardened steel
files, etc. I've got a set and they *do* work - and will go through most
materials. They're quite useful in situations when you're not quite sure
what you're going to encounter - like drilling above windows when you don't
know whether the lintel is concrete or steel. But I wouldn't regard them as
precision devices, and normally prefer the correct drill for the material -
wood bit for wood, HSS for steel, SDS for concrete, etc.
--
Cheers,
Roger
______
Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!

Dave
wibbled on Sunday 20 December 2009 17:20

I have just watched a prog on digital tv (Ideal world) and they were
demonstrating a drill set that can drill through wood, plaster, brick,
concrete, tiles, mild steel, cast iron and bricks. See www.idealworld.tv

They were saying that they were a tipped drill and the tip was
cryogenically frozen cobalt. Now I have been around drills all my
working life and I can't understand how a drill can keep an edge on
these materials. They did demonstrate what would happen with this drill,
compared to a carbide tipped drill, by pushing it tip first into a
normal carbide grinding wheel. Their drill formed a groove in the wheel,
the carbide tipped drill had its tip ground back.

Has anyone come across them before?

Dave

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/95958

--
Tim Watts

This space intentionally left blank...

In article ,
Dave writes:
I have just watched a prog on digital tv (Ideal world) and they were
demonstrating a drill set that can drill through wood, plaster, brick,
concrete, tiles, mild steel, cast iron and bricks. See www.idealworld.tv

They were saying that they were a tipped drill and the tip was
cryogenically frozen cobalt.

What does cryogenically frozen mean when it freezes at 1495°C?
Dunked in water, perhaps?

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On 20 Dec, 19:09, Tim W wrote:
Dave

Has anyone come across them before?

Cobalt-unobtainium alloy drill bits have been around for decades, but
are a very niche market. Locksmithing is one user of them, for
drilling hardplate in safes. Certainly the chap demonstrating drilling
through files was at the model engineer exhibition 30 years ago.

They're less useful than you'd think. Just how often do you need to
drill something that won't respond to a carbide masonry bit, or decent
HSS ? I've used mine a few times (every couple of years), but always
for demolishing stuff, not for fabrication. As always when drilling
out broken drill stubs etc., wandering sideways into the softer metal
is a huge problem.


http://www.screwfix.com/prods/95958

Those aren't.

The usual "cobalt" drills these days have a "cobalt" (sic) coating on
them, giving a bluish rainbow look. They're cheap, Chinese, and made
of a secret alloy of rubber and bananas. No earthly use for anything.

Andy Dingley
wibbled on Sunday 20 December 2009 23:52



http://www.screwfix.com/prods/95958

Those aren't.

The usual "cobalt" drills these days have a "cobalt" (sic) coating on
them, giving a bluish rainbow look. They're cheap, Chinese, and made
of a secret alloy of rubber and bananas. No earthly use for anything.

Yeah - I was thinking more about the claimed ability to drill various
substrates. The Bosch drills do work, (limited depending on substrate, very
well on others).

If I were the OP I'd buy the Bosch which has some record of usability before
a random TV ad set.

Cheers

Tim


--
Tim Watts

This space intentionally left blank...

Tim W wrote:

Yeah - I was thinking more about the claimed ability to drill various
substrates. The Bosch drills do work, (limited depending on substrate,
very well on others).


In desperation I tried these Bosch ones from screwfix to drill out a broken
drill bit is a feed auger, it made no progress and then the tip
disintegrated.

AJH

(Andrew Gabriel) writes:

In article ,
Dave writes:
I have just watched a prog on digital tv (Ideal world) and they were
demonstrating a drill set that can drill through wood, plaster, brick,
concrete, tiles, mild steel, cast iron and bricks. See www.idealworld.tv

They were saying that they were a tipped drill and the tip was
cryogenically frozen cobalt.

What does cryogenically frozen mean when it freezes at 1495°C?
Dunked in water, perhaps?

If you solidify metal quickly enough you can get metallic glass.
(My metallurgy supervisor was working on this thirty years ago
by dipping a thermally massive rotating wheel into molten metal,
resulting in a ribbon of metallic glass whizzing off. I've no
idea of the current state of the art.) Dropping hot cobalt into
liquid nitrogen might do it, but whether cobalt glass is any use
for anything, I can't say.

--
Jón Fairbairn
http://www.chaos.org.uk/~jf/Stuff-I-dont-want.html (updated 2009-01-31)

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Jon Fairbairn
saying something like:

If you solidify metal quickly enough you can get metallic glass.
(My metallurgy supervisor was working on this thirty years ago
by dipping a thermally massive rotating wheel into molten metal,
resulting in a ribbon of metallic glass whizzing off. I've no
idea of the current state of the art.) Dropping hot cobalt into
liquid nitrogen might do it, but whether cobalt glass is any use
for anything, I can't say.

Reminds me of dropping molten lead into a bucket of water. Weird spikey
shapes.

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Jon Fairbairn
saying something like:

If you solidify metal quickly enough you can get metallic glass.
(My metallurgy supervisor was working on this thirty years ago
by dipping a thermally massive rotating wheel into molten metal,
resulting in a ribbon of metallic glass whizzing off. I've no
idea of the current state of the art.) Dropping hot cobalt into
liquid nitrogen might do it, but whether cobalt glass is any use
for anything, I can't say.

Reminds me of dropping molten lead into a bucket of water. Weird
spikey shapes.

I thought that was how they made perfectly round musket balls?


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

The Medway Handyman wrote:

Reminds me of dropping molten lead into a bucket of water. Weird
spikey shapes.

I thought that was how they made perfectly round musket balls?


They would form and solidify during the long drop in air.

AJH

In message , andrew
writes
The Medway Handyman wrote:

Reminds me of dropping molten lead into a bucket of water. Weird
spikey shapes.

I thought that was how they made perfectly round musket balls?


They would form and solidify during the long drop in air.



I've wondered about that in the past - surely they would be a bit "pear"
shaped from their passage through air

--
geoff

andrew wrote:

Tim W wrote:

Yeah - I was thinking more about the claimed ability to drill various
substrates. The Bosch drills do work, (limited depending on substrate,
very well on others).


In desperation I tried these Bosch ones from screwfix to drill out a broken
drill bit is a feed auger, it made no progress and then the tip
disintegrated.

Yes, I use them everyday. They are useful for being abe to drill through
wood and masonry at the same time. They are pretty dire at wood and
metal alone, taking twice as long as a normal drill, as they have a
masonry style tip, so do not cut through the material, but rather just
wear it away.

On masonry, they are good.
Alan.

--
To reply by e-mail, change the ' + ' to 'plus'.

In article , geoff
writes
In message , andrew
writes

They would form and solidify during the long drop in air.

I've wondered about that in the past - surely they would be a bit "pear"
shaped from their passage through air

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_tower gives a good insight but I see
what you mean about the pear shape, surface tension makes them round
though (apparently).
--
fred
BBC3, ITV2/3/4, channels going to the DOGs

geoff wrote:
In message , andrew
writes
The Medway Handyman wrote:

Reminds me of dropping molten lead into a bucket of water. Weird
spikey shapes.

I thought that was how they made perfectly round musket balls?


They would form and solidify during the long drop in air.



I've wondered about that in the past - surely they would be a bit
"pear" shaped from their passage through air

Quick Google suggests they were also moulded.

Thinking about logistics, they would have needed to mass produce them.
Wellington had 67,000 troops at waterloo, assuming they had 60 rounds each,
thats around 4 million balls minimum.

It must have been a huge scale industrial production.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

"andrew" wrote in message
...
Tim W wrote:

Yeah - I was thinking more about the claimed ability to drill various
substrates. The Bosch drills do work, (limited depending on substrate,
very well on others).


In desperation I tried these Bosch ones from screwfix to drill out a
broken
drill bit is a feed auger, it made no progress and then the tip
disintegrated.

The Bosch are great for drilling through tiles and into masonry or wood
beneath.

In article ,
Doctor Drivel wrote:
The Bosch are great for drilling through tiles and into masonry or wood
beneath.

They are utterly useless on hard porcelain tiles.

--
*Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 22 Dec, 01:46, geoff wrote:

I've wondered about that in the past - surely they would be a bit "pear"
shaped from their passage through air

No, you need an alloy with good surface tension, and a low viscosity
fluid to fall through. This is why round shot is made by dropping
through air until it's solid, rather than pouring directly into water.

"Pear" or "teardrop" shapes might be an efficient shape for
streamlining (i.e. lower drag for a shape that's already that shape),
which also implies it's the lowest energy shape and thus the shape a
drop is encouraged to form into by the viscous drag. However at
Reynold's numbers this low, there's not enough drag force (relative to
surface tension) to force a drop into any shape, so surface tension
predominates.

On 22 Dec, 09:51, "The Medway Handyman"
wrote:

Quick Google suggests they were also moulded.

Swaged (nit-pickingly more specific than "moulding"). Not in the small
sizes though. Dropped shot is cheap & simple.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Doctor Drivel wrote:
The Bosch are great for drilling through tiles and into masonry or
wood beneath.

They are utterly useless on hard porcelain tiles.

This is true BTDTGTTS. They are however brilliant on normal tiles. You can
apply pressure (drill off) until you hear a 'crunch' noise and the sharp
point penetrates the glaze, then carry on. No slipping at all.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

In article ,
The Medway Handyman wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Doctor Drivel wrote:
The Bosch are great for drilling through tiles and into masonry or
wood beneath.

They are utterly useless on hard porcelain tiles.

This is true BTDTGTTS. They are however brilliant on normal tiles. You
can apply pressure (drill off) until you hear a 'crunch' noise and the
sharp point penetrates the glaze, then carry on. No slipping at all.

You can use HSS drills on normal tiles too. Make a center by using a tile
scribe - or even a center punch used with care. And a slow drill speed
with steady pressure. I'm not too keen on those multi-purpose drills as
they do nothing well. But realise they can be handy if carrying everything
with you.

--
*Dance like nobody's watching.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

fred wrote:
In article , geoff
writes
In message , andrew
writes

They would form and solidify during the long drop in air.

I've wondered about that in the past - surely they would be a bit
"pear" shaped from their passage through air

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_tower gives a good insight but I see
what you mean about the pear shape, surface tension makes them round
though (apparently).

Thanks for posting that Fred, interesting read. I'd been looking around but
didn't realise they were called shot towers.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Medway Handyman wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Doctor Drivel wrote:
The Bosch are great for drilling through tiles and into masonry or
wood beneath.

They are utterly useless on hard porcelain tiles.

This is true BTDTGTTS. They are however brilliant on normal tiles.
You can apply pressure (drill off) until you hear a 'crunch' noise
and the sharp point penetrates the glaze, then carry on. No
slipping at all.

You can use HSS drills on normal tiles too. Make a center by using a
tile scribe - or even a center punch used with care. And a slow
drill speed with steady pressure. I'm not too keen on those
multi-purpose drills as they do nothing well. But realise they can be
handy if carrying everything with you.

I'm pretty much sold on them for that reason. Going back down 4 flights of
stairs to get another drill bit is a PITA!

TMH's first law of stairs; the more flights up you are, the more often you
need to go back to the van.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

Andy Dingley wrote:
On 20 Dec, 19:09, Tim W wrote:
Dave

Has anyone come across them before?

Cobalt-unobtainium alloy drill bits have been around for decades, but
are a very niche market. Locksmithing is one user of them, for
drilling hardplate in safes. Certainly the chap demonstrating drilling
through files was at the model engineer exhibition 30 years ago.

They're less useful than you'd think. Just how often do you need to
drill something that won't respond to a carbide masonry bit, or decent
HSS ? I've used mine a few times (every couple of years), but always
for demolishing stuff, not for fabrication. As always when drilling
out broken drill stubs etc., wandering sideways into the softer metal
is a huge problem.

One way round that, is to obtain some high carbon steel bushes with the
right size hole in the middle and a bush holder to clamp to the job,
even it it means drilling another hole to attach it. The closer the
drill bit is to the clamp, the better. It helps to prevent any circular
rotation of the bush holder.

Dave

Tim W wrote:
Andy Dingley
wibbled on Sunday 20 December 2009 23:52


http://www.screwfix.com/prods/95958
Those aren't.

The usual "cobalt" drills these days have a "cobalt" (sic) coating on
them, giving a bluish rainbow look. They're cheap, Chinese, and made
of a secret alloy of rubber and bananas. No earthly use for anything.

Yeah - I was thinking more about the claimed ability to drill various
substrates. The Bosch drills do work, (limited depending on substrate, very
well on others).

If I were the OP I'd buy the Bosch which has some record of usability before
a random TV ad set.

I had no intention of buying them thanks :-)
I was just curious to know a bit more about them.

Dave

Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
Dave writes:
I have just watched a prog on digital tv (Ideal world) and they were
demonstrating a drill set that can drill through wood, plaster, brick,
concrete, tiles, mild steel, cast iron and bricks. See www.idealworld.tv

They were saying that they were a tipped drill and the tip was
cryogenically frozen cobalt.

What does cryogenically frozen mean when it freezes at 1495°C?
Dunked in water, perhaps?

That was one point I could not understand. I always thought that liquid
nitrogen was the coldest, easily available thing to use.

Dave

On Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 1:46:44 AM UTC, geoff wrote:
In message , andrew
writes
The Medway Handyman wrote:

Reminds me of dropping molten lead into a bucket of water. Weird
spikey shapes.

I thought that was how they made perfectly round musket balls?


They would form and solidify during the long drop in air.



I've wondered about that in the past - surely they would be a bit "pear"
shaped from their passage through air

--
geoff

I have seen moulds to make musket balls. Two halves in a pair of "tongs".
Looked like they were intended for use on the (battle?) field after you'd raided the local church roof.

In article , harry wrote:
On Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 1:46:44 AM UTC, geoff wrote:
In message , andrew
writes
The Medway Handyman wrote:

Reminds me of dropping molten lead into a bucket of water. Weird
spikey shapes.

I thought that was how they made perfectly round musket balls?

They would form and solidify during the long drop in air.

I've wondered about that in the past - surely they would be a bit "pear"
shaped from their passage through air

I have seen moulds to make musket balls. Two halves in a pair of "tongs".
Looked like they were intended for use on the (battle?) field after you'd raided the local church roof.

I think the "long drop in air" method is for smaller shot than musket balls:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_tower