In an effort to meet the users' demands to improve production efficiency, tooling manufacturers are continuously innovating in the design and manufacturing strategies of various drilling tools.

In different manufacturing industries such as automobiles, medical instruments, aerospace, general engineering, etc., manufacturers can select various advanced drilling tools, including high drilling rate solid carbide drills, indexable insert drills, replaceable carbide drill bits, and increasingly used multi-functional drills, etc., to drill various small holes and deep holes, and to complete drilling, chamfering, countersinking, etc. in one go without further secondary processing.

Tooling manufacturers are fully utilizing advances in tool geometry, substrate materials and surface coatings to continuously introduce new tooling varieties, expand existing product families and harden custom designed, dedicated tools into standard, off-the-shelf products. CNC machine tools (especially machining centers), Swiss-type lathes and long bed lathes that can optimize the performance of long drills have also played a role in realizing the advantages of advanced drilling cutting tools. The high rigidity and the ability to deliver large amounts of coolant under high pressure of modern machining centers are also critical for drilling operations.

In metal cutting operations, reducing machining time is one of the primary goals, and it is no different for hole machining. Additionally, certain industries have very high precision requirements for holes, adding extra pressure to hole machining. For example, the medical and aerospace manufacturing industries demand very tight tolerance on hole runout and consistency in tool life. Manufacturers also face the challenge of machining advanced workpiece materials (such as titanium alloys, Inconel alloys, cobalt-chromium alloys, etc.).

Tungsten carbide end mills are still a good choice for machining, because of their inherent high rigidity and five other design features that are still effective – tungsten carbide surface coating, milling cutter geometry, cutting edge width and relief angle (usually to φ25mm), PVDcoating (top layer is a smooth layer that prevents chip adhesion), which is combined with a strong and tough tungsten carbide substrate that allows the milling cutter to be machined at a higher feed rate. The milling cutter geometry is designed according to each specific workpiece material, including difficult-to-machine materials. The reasonable design of the cutting edge width can improve the accuracy of the milling cutter and the drilling ability. The size of the relief angle will affect the contact surface between the machined hole and the milling cutter, so it must be precisely designed according to different materials to avoid shortening the tool life due to friction.

The smallest amount of lubrication (MQL) developed by the cutting division of Nachi America Inc., a Japanese company (), AGPower long-life twist drill, cobalt high-speed steel non-internal cooled drill, and TiAlN coated drill have been successfully applied in the automotive plants of Ford, General Motors, and Honda, where the number of oil holes drilled on the crankshaft can be doubled compared to powder metal drilling, and the machining cost per piece of workpiece is reduced by 50 percent.

Multifunctional hole machining cutters are highly valuable for their ability to shorten machining time and eliminate secondary machining. As a manufacturer of precision rotating tool holders and other integral fit tool systems, Ingersoll Cutting Tools' manufacturing engineers realized that combining drilling, chamfering, and counterboring functions into a single cutter could achieve the high precision required for machining the handle of a pull rivet. To this end, they developed aQwik Twist replaceable drill bit that integrates multiple functions. Using this drill bit to perform drilling, counterboring, and chamfering operations on4000 series alloy steel pull rivets (hole diameter φ22.2mm, hole depth98.3mm) can shorten machining time by more than7 minutes. Now, theQwik Twist multifunctional drill bit has been included inIngersoll's company's hole machining cutter product series and is being designed and manufactured by a technical team.

To integrate the drilling and chamfering functions into a single tool, Sumitomo Electric has developed two machining systems, one for solid carbide drill bodies and the other for SMD replaceable carbide drill bits. The SumiChamfer system securely sleeves a ring chamfer head onto the drill body of a solid carbide drill and then clamps it into a chuck for machining. The chamfer ring is available in three models, completing drilling and chamfering operations for hole sizes of 4 to 20mm. This system uses industrial standard ER series chucks, and as the hole diameter increases, a larger size chuck with greater clamping force is used [ER20 (4mm), ER25 (9.4mm), ER32 (14.0mm)]. Two types of SumiChamfer-style standard cutters can be used during machining, one of which, the ACZ310 grade cutter, is suitable for machining all workpiece materials. Sumitomo Electric has also developed an SMD replaceable drill bit system for the SumiChamfer.SMD sumiChamferSeries of chamfer rings, suitable for diameters12～22.5mmmetric or imperial standardSMDdrill bits.SMDchamfer rings use standardsumiChamferstyle cutters, cutters are available with and without chip breakers, both types are made ofACZ310grade.