Stop Compensating. Start Cutting.
If you’ve ever drilled carbon fiber, you’ve seen it. The entry looks clean. The top surface checks out. Then you flip the part—and the exit is destroyed. Delamination, fuzz, and often scrap.
The typical response is to slow everything down. Add peck cycles. Reduce feed rates. What should be a quick operation turns into a drawn-out process just to avoid damage. A three-second hole suddenly takes five times longer—and still isn’t guaranteed to be right.
The issue isn’t speed—it’s force. Most drills push through material, and when they break through CFRP, there’s no support left behind the cut. Instead of shearing cleanly, the tool forces fibers outward, separating them from the resin. That’s what causes delamination at the exit.
The problem only intensifies with stack materials like CFRP with aluminum or titanium. Now you’re dealing with hot metal chips re-entering the hole, damaging the walls and compromising tolerances. The signs are familiar: crunching at breakthrough, bird nesting on the tool, reliance on peck cycles just to get through, and fuzzy exits that require a second operation. At that point, it’s no longer just a tooling issue—it’s physics working against the process.
A better approach is to change how the cut happens. The Wave-Point® Drill from Sharon-Cutwell is designed to do exactly that. Instead of pushing through the material, it pulls fibers into the cut, maintaining control during breakthrough.
Its patented wave geometry breaks the cutting edge into stages, distributes cutting forces across multiple points, and stabilizes the material as the tool exits. The result is a controlled, clean break rather than fiber separation.
On the shop floor, that translates into real gains. Higher feed rates without delamination. Clean entry and exit holes. No fuzz or uncut fiber. Stable performance in CFRP/aluminum and CFRP/titanium stacks. Peck cycles can be reduced or eliminated, and the CVD diamond coating extends tool life even in abrasive materials.
The outcome is a more predictable process. No more programming around the problem—no slowing feeds, no excessive pecking, no secondary cleanup, and no constant interruptions to manage chips. Instead, you get consistent hole quality, reliable cycle times, and faster throughput—often bringing cycle times back down to just a few seconds per hole.
Bottom line: if your process is built around avoiding damage, you’re already sacrificing efficiency. Stop compensating for the problem and start cutting with control.
Learn How Custom tools from Sharon-Cutwell can improve your productivity and results.
