A novel self-centring drill bit design for low-trauma bone drilling

Abstract Drilling is one of the most common procedures in orthopaedic surgery. However, drilling-induced trauma occurs frequently and affects the processing damage and position accuracy of the holes, which strongly influence the postoperative recovery. Therefore, there is an urgent need to design a dedicated drill bit that can satisfy low-trauma requirements such as low cutting force, low temperature, self-centring, and low surface damage during orthopaedic surgery. In this work, a novel three-step drill structure is proposed to modify the cutting conditions at the entrance and exit of drilling, to effectively reduce the mechanical and thermal damages and improve the position accuracy in bone drilling. As the first step drill, a unique tip with thinned web was adopted by considering the drill skidding mechanisms under a non-perpendicular drilling condition. The second step was achieved by using an optimal point angle for balancing the effects of the cutting force and temperature. Moreover, a transition arc design was proposed as the third step to adjust the point angle during the finishing stage for switching the cutting mechanism from ‘fracture & shear crack’ cutting to ‘shear’ cutting in association with a certain range of feeding rates. This could reduce the mechanical and thermal damages to the finished hole surface. Drilling experiments under various process conditions demonstrated that the proposed drill design significantly reduced the drilling force, temperature, and damage and also improved the position accuracy of the holes compared to the conventional drill design. The proposed design provides an effective tool to achieve low-trauma bone drilling in orthopaedic surgery.