Five Tips for Choosing A Paper Drill

If you need to punch holes in large amounts of paper there is nothing like a paper drill. Rather than standard punches which usually push a sharp die through the paper, paper drills use a hollow bit that drills its way through paper. This allows paper drills to create holes in literally hundreds of sheets of paper at a time. There is no faster way to punch your documents with either a 3-hole or 2-hole pattern. In fact, you can even create other hole patterns using a paper drill. However, choosing a paper drill can be somewhat difficult. Here are five things to keep in mind when you are looking at paper drills.

1. The Number of Spindles: A paper drill works much like a drill press. Single spindle drills are capable of drilling a single hole at a time. If you want to drill more than one hole at a time, you will need a drill that has multiple spindles. A two spindle drill will offer more than twice the productivity that a single spindle drill offers (you save the set up time as well as the drilling time).
2. The Maximum Drilling Thickness: Different paper drills are capable of drilling through different thicknesses of paper. The heavier duty the drill, the more paper that the drill will be able to handle at one time. When looking for a paper drill it is a good idea to look for a drill that can handle 2” or more of paper at one time.
3. Drill Control: Many paper drills are manual and require you to pull a handle or use a pedal to lower the drill bits through the paper. These drills work well but can be a little bit tricky to operate. If you bring the drill bit down too quickly or with too much force it is easy to ruin the bit. As an alternative, electric and hydraulic paper drills are capable of applying even pressure through the drilling process and do not require physical force to drill through the paper. Although electric drills are much easier to use, it is still easy to wear out the bit quickly if bit wax is not used and the bits are not sharpened regularly.
4. Drill Bit Availability: Different sized drill bits are available to drill different sized holes in your paper. However, not all drills are capable of handling all drill bits. If you are going to need to drill non standard sized holes you will want to find a drill bit that is capable of handling all the different sized holes that you are looking for.
5. Size: Paper drills are available as either counter top units or floor standing units. Counter top or desk top units are much smaller but are not usually as heavy duty. Floor standing units are ideal for print shops and production environments but they require more space and more power.

These are five simple things to look for when evaluating different paper drills that are available on the market. Look for these things when you shop for a paper dill.

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Written by Jeff McRitchie
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