the.com/drillbit
a spiral of hardened steel that eats through anything slower than its own ambition
means The cutting tip of a drill — a hardened, spiral-fluted piece of metal that bores holes by spinning against wood, metal, or stone.
from A plain compound of "drill" and "bit." "Drill" came into English from Dutch "drillen," meaning to bore or turn around, in the 1600s. "Bit" is far older — the same Old English "bita," a thing that bites or is bitten, that also gives us the bit a horse champs between its teeth. So a drillbit is, quite literally, the biting part of the boring tool: the bit that does the gnawing.
- twist job
- Spiral flutes haul shavings up and out of the hole
- diamond tier
- Hardest bits are tipped with literal diamonds
- hot work
- Friction can glow tips orange mid-cut
- point math
- 118-degree tip angle is the metal-drilling standard
- deep down
- Oil rig bits grind for miles into rock
the world's deepest well — kola superdeep borehole in russia reached 7.6 miles deep in 1989
diamond drill bit — used in oil wells like deepwater horizon, can cut through rock at 2+ miles depth
tricone bit — standard rotary drill bit used in most oil and gas wells worldwide