Paper drilling
Paper drilling is a method that is used in industrial bookbinding and is used to punch holes in large quantities of paper in the form of loose sheets or bound and stapled brochures . The holes are usually used for storage and fastening (filing), less often for decorative purposes.
Terms
Paper drilling is a manufacturing process for punching stacks of paper. Paper drilling machines are used for this purpose.
Paper drilling machine is the general term for manual, electrical and automatic machines for punching stacks of paper. A paper drilling system is an automatic paper drilling machine that combines several operations in a continuous workflow.
The term paper drill usually refers to the tools that are used to drill paper. Paper drill is rarely used as a synonym for paper drill.
Technique of paper drilling
Drilling paper is a method of making round holes in stacks of paper or other material. For this purpose, hollow paper drills are clamped in a driven spindle and driven through the stack. Paper drills are available for different hole diameters and with different coatings.
In contrast to punching (as with office punch ), not only a few sheets of paper can be processed with paper drilling, instead a paper drilling machine can drill a whole stack in one operation. Depending on the model, either the paper drill is driven from top to bottom through the stack or the table of the paper drill is moved up.
A paper drilling machine can be equipped with different numbers of spindles, each of which is built into a drill head . The range of models starts with single- and two-spindle paper drilling machines for small runs and use in the office and extends to programmable paper drilling machines with more than 20 spindles or drill heads.
The paper drill
Paper drills drill circular holes with a diameter of 2 mm or more (D) in flat, thin and usually stacked material, such as paper, plastic or metal foil, leather, fabric or rubber. Depending on the drilling diameter, drilling depths of approx. 10 × D are possible with a rotating tool. When punching, paper drills are shorter and thicker-walled and are also referred to as punching pipes because of the channel for the paper discs that emerges from the side. Punching depths of up to 5 × D are possible here. Commercially available desk punches reach a maximum of 1 × D.
The individual components of a paper drill are the cutting edge, the tube and the shaft that is used for clamping. There are different shank shapes depending on the machine manufacturer. The usual standards for European machine manufacturers are the cylindrical 11, 16 and 24 mm shafts. Outwardly, paper drills hardly differ from one another, but there are differences in terms of the types of tool steel used, internal geometries, wall thickness ratios and surface properties, which essentially determine the usage properties.
How a paper drill works
Viewed categorically, a paper drill is a hollow drill , whereas a hollow drill chops or shreds solid material (steel, stone, glass, ...) in the immediate face area of the drill bit with geometrically defined or undefined cutting edges. In the case of a conventional hollow drill, in addition to the comminuted drill material, a cylindrical stump of the drill material remains in the hollow drill. However, paper drills have a cup point that divides the material along these cutting circular. The planar cuttings must then be reshaped in the tapered cutting edge in the shape of a dome and transported up through the pipe solely by the drilling pressure. Behind the shaft there is an opening in the spindle, from which the drilling material can be discharged to the outside.
Paper drills work dry so that the drillings are not damaged. In difficult cases and in continuous use, coated drills, as well as air cooling and minimum quantity spray lubrication systems have proven themselves. In rare cases, wax paper is also used as the top layer for lubrication. If a paper drill becomes dull, it must be sharpened very carefully and in good time. New, patented systems are designed to replace only the front cutting area and either offer regrinding as a professional service or do without it entirely.
Applications - products and materials
Common applications for drilling paper are, for example, various filing holes for files and ring binders, loose-leaf works, rows of holes for wire comb binding and tags. Many products that are processed with a paper drill are stationery such as writing pads or ring binder inlays. In addition, catalogs, brochures and operating instructions are among the products that are frequently processed. In addition to various types of paper (e.g. offset paper, recycled paper, matt and gloss coated papers, different grammages ), a modern paper drilling machine can also process many other materials such as plastic foils and cardboard.
Paper drilling machine users
Paper drilling machines are regularly used in industrial bookbinderies, printing works with their own processing, in-house printing works and copy shops. Depending on the range of tasks and the number of copies, these companies use different types of paper drilling machines - from simple, hand-operated single and two-spindle paper drilling machines as table models to classic four-spindle machines with electrical lift to automatic, integrated paper drilling systems. These high-performance paper drilling machines can be used in a production line with other machines.
confetti
To make round confetti , circular disks with a diameter of 6–30 mm are made from paper or plastic film by drilling or punching. If the circular bores, which are closely placed one behind the other to save material, overlap, irregularly shaped discs are created - on the one hand in the shape of a partially eclipsed sun on the other hand in a cross shape as a remaining area between 4 bores.