Tough brass! ??

[graham-xrf]

All I wanted to do was drill out the little brass M3 insert in a 25mm nylon spacer. Drill after drill, new, old, sizes various, and none worked!
Yes - I am guessing that standard hardware store 118° angle drill bits just might have a problem with brass, and I might have to sacrifice an M4 or M4.5 in a drill sharpening adventure with a brass recipe in mind.

So now, we are off to Google to discover the trick!

 

[markba633csi]

That's odd- brass is usually easy to drill- you sure it isn't magnetic (steel) with brass plating?

 

[RJSakowski]

Usually, drills for brass are modified so they don't bite as aggressively.

A dumb question but have you inadvertently reversed the drill direction?

 

[mmcmdl]

Possibly bearing bronze ?

 

[sdelivery]

What is the existing size hole and what size are you trying to go to?

 

[benmychree]

Possibly bearing bronze ?

Bearing bronze in most varieties drills easily, exceptions are aluminum bronze and nickel aluminum bronze (Ampco #18 and 22)

 

[mmcmdl]

Thanks John , I meant the Ampco .

 

[benmychree]

Thanks John , I meant the Ampco .

Where I apprenticed, they used lots of Ampco, not fun to work with; a journeyman was machining bushinge using a carbide tool with a ground in chipbreaker, I thought this a bit odd, and asked him about it, he answered in his Croation accent "Thees isa not brass, thees isa yellow steel", he was arguably the best lathe man in the shop, and retired as shop superintendent, after he retired I hired him for my busy season, he was my good friend for many years until his passing RIP Branko Balija.

 

[mmcmdl]

I have a 12" piece of that **** outside that I saved for some reason . Tougher than a $2 steak .

 

[graham-xrf]

I was completely surprised! I had expected the drills to maybe "grab", and mess up, but instead, they just spun and got very hot. No much chips past the first 1mm. For @sdelivery and others, I was trying to drill out the brass insert setting a M3 (near 1/8") thread into a 25mm long piece of 8mm diameter nylon insulated stand-off. The kind with a male M3 thread sticking out one end, and a female M3 in the other. These are often used as spacers to mount metal chassis or insulated circuit boards. I wanted a hole clear through, to re-purpose it as a 25mm spacer, kinda "ready-made"

A 4.5mm drill would demolish the molded-in insert, but I was happy to start with smaller drills, and widen the hole .
@RJSakowski has it right about modify the drill bit. Also, I have only one left-hand drill bit, and I know where it is.

I got lazy, and asked perplexity.ai, and I discovered that Clickspring has the answer. It is really easy to do. I used my little credit-card sized diamonds metal plate thingy, and put a 0.2mm little flat on the cutting edge, while holding the body of the drill in line with the grind surface. It totally works!