Chip-Shape

Reading chips is one of those skills that separates real deep hole drillers from everyone else. The chips tell you everything — coolant pressure, feed rate, tool condition, material consistency, heat generation. They’re like a conversation the machine is having with you in real time. The problem is, sometimes you don’t want to hear what they’re saying. You’re on a deadline, you’re tired, you’ve got pressure from above to keep the parts coming, and it’s easier to tell yourself the chips look “close enough.” ...

Why Chip Clogging Is the #1 Problem After dealing with chip clogging on maybe fifty different jobs across gun drilling and BTA, three root causes keep showing up. Chip clogging accounts for roughly 60% of all troubleshooting calls I handle. When chips pack in the flute or bore, coolant flow stops, torque spikes, and the tool breaks within seconds. The mechanism is simple: the drill generates chips faster than the coolant stream pushes them out of the bore. The chips accumulate, jam against the drill body, and block the chip flute entirely. Once the flute is blocked, coolant cannot reach the cutting edge and the drill fails almost instantly. ...