To answer an increasing demand from customers, GWS has added a new line of precision tools to its existing lineup of holemaking products. Initial models include the 4005 Series ECO Premium High Performance Carbide Drills, the 4050 Series PAC Premium High Performance Carbide Reamers, and the 4105 Series ECO Premium High Performance Carbide Drills with coolant through.

These offerings are ideal for many applications right off the shelf. But that’s only part of the story. In addition to our standard items, we now offer quick turnaround on custom holemaking solutions like step drills, deep hole drills and step reamers. This is especially important to our customers in fast moving industries like automotive, aerospace and medical, where new special applications are routine occurrences.

Times Have Changed

Responsibility for the new holemaking line falls to John Kiiffner, our Product Manager of Drills, Reamers and Micro-Drills. John’s background in tooling beganin 1988, and he’s been with GWS since 1997. During his career, John has seen cutting tools go from simple to complex. He says the level of sophistication seen in the GWS catalog has grown to match the advances in jet engines, medical implants and electric vehicles. “The geometries and options were pretty simple back when I started,” he said. “Not to mention there was a smaller range of raw materials. Now we have so many different grades of aluminum and steel, exotic metals like titanium and cobalt chrome, not to mention high temp, chemical resistant plastics that are machined for medical implants.”

There’s been a lot of changes on the tool side of manufacturing as well. “We have more variables to work with for our custom line, including new carbide substrates, drill point designs and custom coatings.” Innovations in offline programing and simulation software also play a huge part.

“We can leverage these advances to provide high levels of precision along with cost savings that come from long tool life and minimization of cycle times,” John remarked. “This is extremely vital in high volume production environments.”

Finding Out the Need

As a Product Manager, John’s job is to analyze the customer’s application and give direction to the type of custom tooling needed for the job. His work requires a lot of road time to maintain relationships with his customer base, which is more high-volume production than your typical job shop. Quantities of parts produced in an automotive, aerospace or medical facility can easily reach 40-50K per day.

Along with volume, precision is extremely vital in custom applications. Automotive parts related to fuel injection such as diesel fuel rails, lifter bodies, etc. have holes that can be as small as 1 to 1.5mm in diameter. Some of our custom finishing reamers are within 5 microns tolerance in diameter and 10 microns in length. We have proven ourselves to be very successful with major automotive parts corporations and their 1st and 2nd tier suppliers due to our ability to make tools that are accurate to specifications like these time after time.

How It Comes Together

Staying in front of the customer’s machine on a regular basis allows John to get the feedback necessary to continually improve the process. “We may start with nothing more than a standard CAD drawing or even a sample of the component to be machined,” he said. John then coordinates with our designers to reverse engineer the right combination of elements to make the perfect tool for the application.

“Not that we always hit the mark on the first try,” John remarked. “It may take 3 to 4 variations of a tool over a span of time, sending the customer anywhere from 6 to 12 pieces of each variation to test.

“But, as our long-term customers know, we are totally committed to the process. We never raise the success flag until the part is in production.”

Regrind for a Second (or More) Life

Adding to this value is our ability to regrind drills and reamers in-house. Some straight drills can be reground 3 to 4X depending on the wear condition. We take regrinding seriously because the customer has to get the same result in the hole regardless of whether it’s a new or a reground tool. In fact, we have gotten so good we are the preferred regrind source of many customers for their non-GWS drills.

If you have a unique holemaking application, contact us for a consultation. We think you’ll be please with the results.