The next time you’re stuck in an airport fuming over yet another flight delay, think about what the same trip would have been like 100 years earlier.
There were no pressurized jetliners with in-flight snacks, reclining seats and WiFi that could travel from New York to Los Angeles in a little more than six hours.
In fact, not only were propellor-driven biplanes state-of-the-art aircraft in 1923, the first commercial flight was still three years away. When it was finally made, its two passengers would be equipped with goggles and parachutes and sit atop bags of mail for an eight-hour journey from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles.
The journey from then to now required not only decades of advances in design and technology but also parts made from exotic metals and increasingly complex alloys engineered to heighten flexibility and durability as well as reduce weight.
Machining and manufacturing such components, meanwhile, has necessitated comparable advances in tools, which are still evolving to work harder, better and faster on jobs that are growing more difficult rather than easier.
M.A. Ford, founded in 1919, has been at the forefront of that transition, growing from a small Midwestern manufacturer to an international producer of standard, high-performance cutting tools with manufacturing facilities around the world.
Saving Time and Money
Its tools, including a wide range of drills, enable machine shops to improve productivity using even entry-level CNC machines, says Anthony Reyes, a regional business manager for the Davenport, Iowa-based company.
“High-performance drills are designed to support the enhanced cutting parameters machine shops need to reduce machine runtime overall,” Reyes explains. While they can deliver improvements even on older CNC machines, taking advantage of their full range of capabilities requires advanced models.
Older generations of tools wore out quickly on exotic metals such as Inconel, he notes, but newer carbide drills with more advanced geometries can run efficiently and consistently for much longer periods of time.
Still, sticker shock leaves some customers reluctant to invest in the advanced drills, which fetch prices several times higher than general purpose models.
In those cases, “I point out that the high-performance tool can outlast the other by as much as 20 times,” Reyes says. “But until I convince them to try it, a lot of shops just want to use their general purpose tools, bury them and put in another one.”
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I need drills for 6061 aluminum exclusively with center cutting ability. .125" to .5" is the range I use most. Please recommend CNC drills to do better than I'm using now. Thanks
25We hand drill a lot of stainless steel mostly 1/4 inch we use a lot of drill bits
what is the best drill bit for this type of work
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