[Jewelry making - Article 00412] - Re: [Orchid] Drilling holes and gold loss

[Ian W. Wright]

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>        I have just started out a workshop where handmade gold
>     jewellery is made. we use the tradional manual drills to drill
>     holes. I want to make the pieces faster by using flex-shatfs. But I
>     am told that hand pieces generate more gold losses than the
>     traditional drills. Is that True? If yes, then why use the flex
>     shafts for drilling 

    When you drill a hole you remove just the metal which was in the
    hole - it doesn't matter what method you use - a 1mm diameter hole
    1mm deep will contain 1.57 cubic millimetres of metal and any method
    of drilling will remove just that amount of metal. However, what may
    change is the way that metal, in the form of swarf, is collected
    and, because of its higher speed, a flex shaft may tend to fling the
    swarf about more than traditional slow drilling methods and some of
    that swarf may then get lost. In reality the difference is likely to
    be insignificantly small but I suspect that your employers may be
    more concerned about the costs of installing additional power points
    and buying equipment than about gold loss! 

Best wishes,
Ian
Ian W. Wright
Sheffield  UK

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