The 440 will work harden if you feed too slow and let it get too hot.
Instead of peck drilling, try going all the way through with continuous
feed and coolant. That way the bit is cutting unhardened material and
you should have better results.

Chopster wrote:

We are having a problem drilling some 440C stainless steel. Anyway we
are drilling 1/8" holes 1/4" deep. We have been using high speed steel
and been averaging around 75 holes per operation before the drill bit
needed to be changed. However now we are lucky to get 2 or 5 holes
before the drill bit needs to be changed. We had a cobalt drill and
tried it with the same problems. We checked for hardness which we got
Rockwell 35. Which was wierd So we tried file test which was 55-60. I
am thinking that it might be a chromium issue but not sure.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I might try or what might be
the problem and how I might fix it?

Any suggestion will be helpful!