Deep Hole Drilling for Mold Cooling Channels: What Works
I’ve drilled a lot of mold cooling channels. Injection molds, blow molds, extrusion dies — they all need holes for water to flow through, and those holes need to be straight, smooth, and exactly where the print says. (It’s a different challenge from drilling long shafts — with molds, the angles and material hardness are what get you.) The standard approach is gun drilling, and for good reason. A gun drill can put a hole through a block of H13 that’s straight to within 0.1mm per meter and leave a surface finish that doesn’t need any cleanup. You can’t do that with a twist drill. ...