Drill the hole before it has a hole through the centre, or drill halfway or less then rotate and drill halfway again. And I be surprised if your mill has the drill turning fast enough. Best of luck. Oh and another thing peck drilling stops the drill from getting clogged.

Delllboy — look at your messages   John

You need a very small feed per rev on these very small drills. If you do not have a very high RPM then controlling the feed rate with a basic drill is prone to issues as the slightest jerkiness of feed can bust the drill bit. The sensitive drills are used by many people because you can feel the pressure being applied to the workpiece. The leverage and gearing found on manual drills and mills takes away that feel. I would expect the maximum feed per rev for a drill of this size to be about 0.0065mm or 0.00025″ so that works out at 6.5mm/minute or 0.25″/per minute per 1000rpm. So if you are limited to say 3000rpm you are limited to a feed rate of 19.5mm/minute or 0.75″ per minute. This is very slow and also hard to control manually, as I said a slight jerk will take you beyond these feed rates very quickly and you will not feel the pressure build up that will break the drill. It is hard to manually control a large machine with such care as is needed here (unless using a power feed or CNC in MDE mode).

Martin C

If you can then drill the small hole first as doing it after will mean as you start the opposite side the drill bit will be deflected by the angle of th ethread.

You could come at it from both sides but even then have an uneven exit.

If you have  alot of work in teh part then maybe screw a piece of brass into the threaded hole to support th edrill on exit and entry.

No need for a jig, tiny spot drill to start then just drill it.

Spell check alert!  Loctite, Loctite.  Where was AI  when you wanted it.

And I was thinking he was turning up a nipple to push it in with.