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16
th
International Research/Expert Conference
Trends in the Development of Machinery and Associated Technology
TMT 2012, Dubai, UAE, 10-12 September 2012


GEOMETRIC MODELING OF TWIST DRILLS


Janko D. Jovanovi
1
, Obrad Spai
2
1
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Dorda Vaingtona bb., Podgorica, Montenegro
2
Faculty of Production and Menagement, Trg Palih boraca 1, Trebinje, BiH


ABSTRACT
Accurate geometric models of twist drills are needed to determine the required grinding wheel profile
for generating a given drill flute profile design, as well as, for finite element simulations of the drilling
process. This paper presents a method to create accurate models of two-flute conical twist drills using
analytical equations to generate drill flute profile needed for production of twist drills with straight
lips and solidmodeling techniques to generate geometric models of twist drills. Boolean operations are
used to mimic the drill manufacturing steps and generate the fully designed drill.
Keywords: twist drills, geometric modeling, solidmodeling techniques


1. INTRODUCTION
Drilling is one of the most commonly performed material removal processes, being increasingly
popular over the years. The aforementioned process is used to create a cylindrical hole in a solid
section of a work piece material. When using mechanical methods and tools, drilling involves
rotational and linear feed motions. Invented almost two centuries ago, todays twist drill is a general
purpose tool used to produce holes ranging in size from very small (0.1 mm) to quite large diameters
(well over 100mm). Although the conventional drilling tool is very common in industry, it is
characterized by a complex geometry.
Galloway [1] initiated a formal study of drill geometry in his paper where he discussed several aspects
of the drilling process and gave a sophisticated analysis of drill point sharpening based on a conical
grinding concept for straight lipped drills shown in figure 1.

Figure 1. Drill point sharpening based on a conical grinding concept
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In this work the geometry in the vicinity of the drill lips was thoroughly studied including methods of
specifying and measuring the lip clearance angle. Equations for the relevant part of the flute geometry
required to give straight lips were derived together with expressions for lip clearance and rake angles
along the drill lips. Galloway pointed out that the flank surface of the drill would be fully determined
if the semi-cone angle , and the cone apex position with respect to the drill axis, denoted by
parameter d and s in Figure 1, were known in addition to the specified point angle 2p, web thickness
W and diameter D.

Subsequent researchers built on Galloways basic framework and extended his analytical equations to
develop computer-based models. Fujii et al. [2,3] developed algorithms to develop drill models by
computer. The drill geometry was analyzed by considering the slicing of the drill by arbitrary
planes. A computer model was also developed to design a twist drill. Vijayaraghavan et al. [4]
developed an automated drill modeling tool in Solidworks. The tool uses Solidworks to generate a 3D
model of a drill based on manufacturing parameters of the drill supplied by the user. The tool outputs
the drill in a variety of solid geometry formats which can then be meshed and used in different FE
modeling packages. Kyratsis et al. [5,6] developed software routine, which creates parametrically
controlled drill geometries and using different cutting conditions, achieves the generation of solid
models for all the relevant data involved. This routine can simulate the drilling operation using 3D
solids for both the drilling tool and the work piece. Those models were used in order to simulate the
penetration of the tool inside the work piece and subsequently led to the generation of 3D solid models
for the undeformed chip and the cut work piece [5]. This routine also calculates the thrust force of
both the cutting areas of the tool, main edges and chisel edge, simultaneously [6].

This paper deals with establishing procedure, based on Galloways approach, for development of CAD
tool for automated modeling of two-flute conical twist drills. This procedure involves analytical
equations to generate drill flute profile needed for production of twist drills with straight lips and
solidmodeling techniques to generate geometric models of twist drills which mimic the drill
manufacturing steps. Accurate geometric models of twist drills output by this CAD tool are needed to
determine the required grinding wheel profile for generating a given drill flute profile design, as well
as, for finite element simulations of the drilling process.

2. METHOD

2.1 Manufacturing of two-flute drills
Drill manufacturing consists primarily of two grinding steps, namely grinding the flute faces and
grinding the flank faces. The parameters of these grinding operations determine the geometric
parameters of the drill. Parameters such as point angle and web thickness are implicit functions of the
drills manufacturing parameters.

During flute grinding the grinding wheel rotates in-place with the drill simultaneously rotating about
and moving down its axis. The dual motion of the drill controls the helix angle of the flute and the
position and profile of the grinding wheel controls the cross-section of the drill flute. In a two-flute
drill, this is performed twice at orthogonal positions to generate both flutes. During flank grinding, the
grinding wheel rotates about a fixed axis to form a grinding cone of cone semi-angle , shown in
Figure 1, and the dill rotates in-place. This grinding is also performed twice from symmetric
positions to generate both flank surfaces. These flank surfaces can be considered as sections of the
grinding cones.

2.2 Modeling of flute faces
The cross-section of the flute is dependent on the shape of the grinding wheel used for grinding it. The
cross-section of the drill has to be designed such that it generates a straight secondary cutting edge
when the flanks are ground. Hence, the shape of the flute grinding wheel is dependent on the
specifications of the drill that is being ground. The cross-section of the flute can be divided into 6
sections, as shown in Figure 2. Sections 1 and 2 are un-ground parts of the drill-blank and are arcs
which make up a circle.
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Figure 2. Flute cross-section

Sections 3 and 4 can be described by the following polar equation [1]:
( ) ( )
( ) p D
W r
r
W
tan
tan 2
2
arcsin
2 2

=
(1)
where r is a variable in the polar equation, and is varied from W/2 to D/2, is the helix angle. This
polar equation makes sure that the flank section produces a drill with a straight cutting edge. Sections
5 and 6 do not contribute much to the cutting performance of the drill and only need to be optimized to
provide rigidity. For simplicity, they can be modeled as symmetric to sections 3 and 4, respectively
[4].

3D solid model of flute faces is obtained when the flute cross-section is swept, i.e., rotated and
translated about its axis. The sweep matrix is given as:

=
1
2
0 0
0 1 0 0
0 0 cos sin
0 0 sin cos

P
S (2)
where
P
L

2
0 , L is the length of cylindrical fluted portion of the drill and P is pitch, which is
expressed as:
( )

tan

=
D
P
(3)

2.3 Modeling of flank faces
The vertices of the grinding cones, as shown in Figure 1, are as follows:

( )


sin tan cos
sin cos tan
=
=
+ =
d d C
s C
d d C
z
y
x


(4)
where is the angle between the projections of the cone and drill axes on a plane parallel to these
axes, which can be expressed as:
( ) = p
(5)
The upper sign in the previous equations refers to the right grinding cone, while the lower sign refers
to the left grinding cone.

Drawing the cone axes at these vertices and creating a virtual cone, with the semi-cone angle , to
performe a Boolean subrtact cut one can generate the flank faces of the drill.

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3. RESULTS
From the above analysis, the following parameters, geometric and manufacturing, are needed to
completely describe a drill: diameter of drill, web thickness, helix angle, point angle, grinding cone
angle and Galloways parameters. A drill geometric model generated by established procedure, for the
following set of parameters d=11mm, W=1.8mm, =30
o
, 2p=118
o
, =30
o
, d=5.5mm and s=1mm, is
shown in Figure 3.


Figure 3. Generation of drill geometric model


4. CONCLUSION
The novelty of the this research is that the drill modeling procedure, that is going to be embedded in a
commercial CAD environment by exploiting its modeling and graphics capabilities, has been
established. Established procedure is based on geometric and manufacturing drill parameters and
enables producing pure 3D solid model of the two-flute twist drill. These 3D geometric definition
provide the data required for a number of downstream applications, i.e., finite element analysis, 3D
scanning of tool geometry etc.

5. REFERENCES
[1] Galloway D.F.: Some experiments on the influence of various factors on drill performance, Tranactions of
ASME, Vol.79, 1957.
[2] Fujii S., DeVries M.F., Wu S.M.: An analysis of drill geometry for optimum drill design by computer, Part
I Drill geometry analysis, Journal of Engineering for Industry, Vol.92, 1970.
[3] Fujii S., DeVries M.F., Wu S.M.: An analysis of drill geometry for optimum drill design by computer, Part
II Computer aided design, Journal of Engineering for Industry, Vol.92, 1970.
[4] Vijayaraghavan A., Dornfeld D.: Automated drill modeling for drilling process simulation, Transactions of
ASME, Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering, Vol. 7, No.3, 2007.
[5] Kyratsis P., Bilalis N., Antoniadis A.: CAD based predictive models of the undeformed chip geometry in
drilling, World Academy of Science Engineering and Technology, Vol. 5, 2009.
[6] Kyratsis P., Bilalis N., Antoniadis A.: CAD based simulation and design of experiments for determining
thrust force in drilling operations, Computer Aided Design, 2011.