Thermal drilling is a technology that has been widely used in Europe for decades. Many manufacturing Engineers in the U.S. who are unfamiliar with this process could reap the benefits of lower manufacturing costs and higher productivity if only they knew. At Flow Dynamics we feel strongly that when a process with this much potential comes along we should share it with our customers. To that end, we joined forces with Flowdrill Inc. to offer state of the art automated thermal drilling machinery.

What is Thermal Drilling:
Thermal drilling is a friction drilling process that utilizes speed and pressure to generate enough heat to extrude the parent metal inward creating a tapable hole. The result is a very accurate hole with up to 3 times the original wall thickness that can be used for tapping or as a bearing surface. Either a self tapping screw or a form tap can be used to create a secure fastening solution that takes the place of Rivnuts or weld-nuts. This process works well in steel, copper, aluminum, and stainless steel and will work best on thin wall metals.

Flowdrill Inc. of St. Louis Missouri, is the manufacturer of Flowdrill bits, form taps, collet holders suitable for discharging the heat generated by the bits and lubricants. Flow Dynamics is the local authorized distributor for these products.

Our Advanced Machine Automation division (machine automation group) and Flowdrill are the features of an article on thermal drilling in copper pipe in the November 2008 issue.