Drilling P.C. Boards (tips solicited)

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
I am presently using small perforated breadboards that occasionally need the perforations enlarged for leads of larger devices such as diodes and resistors.

Do I really need carbide drills and an expensive Dremel or Skil tool (which in themselves are clumsy to handle)?

What kind of perf boards are you using? I use cheap paper phenolic (usually orange, with tiny copper donuts only one side)... I get away with using a small flat bladed screw driver to ream the hole bigger at the cost of sometimes losing the copper pad.

When I was fabricating my own printed circuit boards at home, using glass boards, I did use the fancy solid carbide drill bits in a dremel drill press. Before the dremel came along, it was a pure torture trying to drill the boards by hand with a conventional drill and conventional bits.

You can buy second hand carbide bits in quantity dirt cheap from a popular online auction site. They're not sharp enough for the high speed CNC milling machines that make industrial boards by the millions, but they're fine for drilling a few holes here or there.