But it isn’t something you’d move sideways through metal like an end mill. The annular cutter is made to go straight down and straight back up with the cutting heads on the end cutting through the metal. The exterior cutting edge is simply acting as a ream, cleaning the wall of the hole so it’s square, straight, smooth and pretty.
An annular cutter comes with a shaft that goes down through the middle of the cutter. When you’re cutting, the shaft is being pushed up inside the cutter, depending upon how thick a piece of metal you are cutting. Then it pushes out the plug after you’ve finished cutting.
One of the big advantages over a twist drill is that the annular cutter has to cut much less metal than the twist drill for the same size hole. With a twist drill, you have to cut all of the metal out, while the annular cutter just cuts the edge of the hole, releasing a plug of metal. So annular cutters are faster, cleaner and increase production.
You also don’t have to drill a pilot hole or work your way up from a smaller bit to larger and larger bits like you dowith a twist drill.
The downside of annular cutters is that you can’t use them in a regular drill press. The drill you are using has to have that plunger to force the plug out.
Kevin shows the set of annular cutters from Evolution he got to go with its EVOMAG 75 magnetic drill.
Kevin is ready to go back to work, but you might want to hang around for another moment to see Kevin Caron have a real brain fart ….