Drilling machinery, equipment used to drill holes in the ground for such activities as prospecting, well sinking (petroleum, natural gas, water, and salt), and scientific explorations. Drilling holes in rock to receive blasting charges is an operation in tunneling, mining, and other excavating.
Most modern drilling machines are either percussive (chipping rock or ground intermittently by impact) or rotary (involving a cutting or grinding action). A combined rotary-percussive drill uses both types of action when the hardness of the stratum warrants it.
The simplest rotary drill is the earth auger, which is hand-operated and resembles the wood auger used in carpentry. The earth auger, used principally for drilling holes in relatively soft earth, is armed with either a spiral drill or a pod-type drill and is attached to a shaft by a socket joint. Successive sections are added to the shaft as the hole deepens.
Rotary drilling may be adapted for use at any angle and is suitable for underground mining. In most rotary drilling, hollow rods of steel provide circulation of cooling water or other fluid. There are three kinds of rotary drill bits: (1) drag bits, which cut the rock with two, three, or four wings, sometimes tipped with tungsten carbide, and are used mostly in soft rock; (2) roller bits, which operate with a crushing action by means of wedge-shaped teeth and are used for harder rock; (3) diamond bits, which grind away the rock. The coring-type diamond bit makes an annular hole, the core of which provides a sample cross section of the strata penetrated, and is used for prospecting.
Percussive drilling is slower than rotary drilling but has a number of special applications, such as for shallow holes. In percussive drilling, blows are applied successively to a tool attached to rods or a cable, and the tool is rotated so that a new portion of the face is attacked at each blow.
Another simple percussive drill consists of one or more lengths of wrought-iron pipe open at both ends, driven by a heavy hammer or, for larger holes, a light pile driver. A second cylinder is sunk inside the first, and water is pumped down the inner pipe to loosen soil and raise debris. For deep boring, rotary drilling has replaced these methods.
Long after the rock drill was invented, manual drilling by two men was still usual in mining operations. One man turned the drill, while the second swung the hammer. Most advances in drilling machinery have been developed by tunnelers. The driving of two particular tunnels, the Mont Cenis (Fréjus) tunnel, between France and Italy, and the Hoosac tunnel, in Massachusetts, U.S.—both driven during the 1850s and ’60s—produced a great number of innovations in rock-drilling equipment, most notably the compressed-air drill.
The first patented rock drill was invented in 1849 by J.J. Couch of Philadelphia. Its drill rod passed through a hollow piston and was thrown like a lance against the rock; caught on the rebound by a gripper, it was again hurled forward by the stroke of the piston. A notable development was a hammering-type rock drill for overhead drilling devised by C.H. Shaw, a Denver machinist, before 1890. Cuttings dropped out by gravity. This machine was called a stoper when it was used in Colorado and California mines. A pneumatic feed held the machine in place and fed the steel into the rock. These two developments, hammering action and air-leg feed, became important in modern machines. The problem of removing the cuttings from horizontal drill holes was eventually solved by the invention of the hollow drill with an air channel for blowing compressed air into the bottom of the hole.
Modern rock drills are commonly mounted on large rigs to bore many holes at one time; the Mont Blanc Tunnel between France and Italy (1960s) was the first tunnel the entire diameter of which was drilled and blasted in a single operation. At the opposite end of the scale, lightweight pneumatic rock drills have also found wide favour in mining and certain tunneling operations. The chief prototype is that designed by Eric Ryd of Sweden, employing a tungsten carbide bit.