Heads up - Aldi twist drills set

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AES

Established Member
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18 Feb 2011
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Switzerland, near Basel
I just bought a set of HSS twist drills from my local Aldi for CHF 29.95 (Swiss Francs) the other day. At the current ER that's roughly £22.50.

The set is Metric and includes 10 off ea jobber length twist drills 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, & 3.0 mm; plus 8 off ea 3.5 & 4.0 mm; plus 4 off ea 4.5, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, & 6.5 mm; plus 3 off ea 8.0 & 10.0 mm. Unfortunately, none of the "odd sizes" needed for Metric thread tapping are included but I guess you can't have it all in one package. And they all have TIN coating (that golden-looking stuff).

Sometimes in the past I've found that TIN coating stuff to be little more than "Marketing Dept's flower-arranging", but with other drills I've bought it does seem to help a bit with swarf extraction.

As said, they're marked HSS, and having now looked at them all fairly carefully, the flutes appear to be accurate & regular, and with the tips ground in the centre and at the correct angle for jobbers drills.

I haven't tried them all (!) but did try a couple at random in my pillar drill, going into 3 mm MS plate using my normal (synthetic) cutting fluid. Both those I tried cut well and were as accurate to size as you can expect any twist drill to be.

In other words I'd rate them as a good buy at the above price.

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that these days neither my hand is steady enough nor my eyesight good enough to sharpen any twist drills under about 3.5 mm dia by hand, so I tend to treat all these sizes as consumables and just replace them when they blunt or as I break them. Hence the attraction of this set with the 10 off each of the small sizes.

As above, this was in Aldi Switzerland, but in the past I've noticed that when UK Forum members post about new stuff coming into their own local Aldi and/or Lidl, the same stuff has often already just appeared here, or will appear soon within the next few weeks.

So I thought this info may be helpful to UK members.
 
Keep your eyes open in Lidl as our ones have a set of tap drills and taps with holder. The drills are sized for the taps. £7.99 a set , wasnt marked up in swiss francs, sorry!
 
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