Why shop at AirToolPro for automatic feed drills and automatic tapping tools?

Since 1987, we have been supplying production drilling equipment to industries across the US, Canada, Mexico and the european markets. We provide the proper equipment based upon your specific requirements. We offer auto feed drills from Ingersoll Rand and Desoutter Tools with all of the accessories.

First, I should explain what an auto feed drill is for those of you who are familiar with the terminology. If your application for drilling or tapping is at a single station where an operator loads parts into a fixture or on a machine such as a rotary table or on a CNC machine where multiple parts are fixtured, The auto feed drill and tapping tools can make your operation run faster.

I'll speak about the Autofeed drill first and then go into the tapping tools in another article. AutoFeed drills which are also called feed drills ... self-feed drills.. fixtured drills, etc. come in two categories, Air and Electric. The difference is the way the spindle is rotated. The Air feed drill has an internal air powered motor and the Electric drill spindle is rotated by a motor that is either timing belt driven or it is directly coupled to the spindle. Both can perform the same drilling functions and both use air to extend and retract the spindle, and both can drill to a precise depth and control the feed rate with the use of a hydraulic feed rate control. But there are some important differences...

The electric drive auto-feed drill has a few advantages over the pneumatic tool. First of all it consumes much less air that the pneumatic drill, using generally less that 1 cubic foot per minute, where the full pneumatic drill can use 20 to 50+ CFM depending on the drill. Second, it is available in higher horsepowers. Third, the RPM remains constant during the drilling cycle, where the pneumatic drill will slow under load.

The advantage of the full pneumatic drill is it's compact form factor, which allows for multiple drills mounted tightly adjacent to each other. Also, it's portability within your work shop because it only requires air to perform the drilling operations. If the drilling cycle is short compared to total production cycle which includes loading and unloading the parts, then the air feed drill is a good option.

Both tools have similar options, like multi-spindle heads capable of drilling 2 plus holes at the same time in one drilling cycle. The number of spindles depends on material, hole diameter, hole spacing and depth.

An interesting feature of the auto feed drill is Peck feed drilling. This is an option that can be added to any of the drills for deep holes. Generally the Peck feed would be used where the hole depth exceeds 5 x the diameter of the drill bit. The pecking option allows the drill to pull chips out of the hole in incremental steps to minimize drill breaking.

Control options for the drills can be manual, such as push buttons or a machine PLC interface.

The two major brands of feed drills are Ingersoll Rand and Desoutter. These two brands have dominated the market for over 60 years and have tens of thousands of installations in every manufacturing environment. Each brand has it's strengths and weaknesses as follows.

The Ingersoll Rand drills are confined to pneumatic only, with the electric powered drill being discontinued several years ago. The pneumatic drills are available in horsepower from 1/4 to 1.25 and RPM from 350 to 19,000 with thrust up to 500 pounds and will cover most drilling applications in a variety of materials. The accessories are similar the Desoutter, with multi-heads, feed controls, interface kits for PLC, output spindles etc.

The Desoutter brand has both the electric and pneumatic tools in horsepower from .3 to 1.5. , RPM for 60 to 18,700, strokes 0-4" on most models. The control options on the Desoutter are more versatile and can be used to control external functions such as tool clamps, safety guards, etc.

A discussion with you about your drilling application is always recommended. We will review and recommend the correct tool and accessories needed to complete your operation. Please call us at our main number 1 800 353 4676

To view our complete selection of air and electric drills, click here visit Drills and Tappers - Home.