Influence of High-Speed Bone Drilling on Drill Bit Wear Intensity and Heat Generation

Tomislav Staroveski, Tea Zizak, Miho Klaic, Danko Brezak

The objective of bone drilling procedures is to drill a hole at the right angle and position with the minimal negative mechanical and thermal influences on a bone tissue. Whereas machining parameters represents one of the most important influential factors related to the quality of the whole process, the aim of this study was to analyze the influence of standard and high-speed drilling regimes on the drill bit wear intensity and bone heat generation. High-speed drilling parameters were selected according to the required torque amount and limitations in the size and weight of electric servo-actuators suitable for hand-held drilling operations in bone and joint surgery. Experiment was performed on a custom-made testbed using medical drill bits and drilling samples made of artificial biomechanical composite material. Wear intensity of drill bits was expectedly higher when using the high-speed regime. However, average temperature values, compared with the one obtained with standard machining parameters for the same flank wear levels, were up to 15% lower. Furthermore, drill bit wear process seems to have a very limited influence on the bone heat generation in the case of the high-speed drilling.

https://doi.org/10.31871/IJNTR.6.1.16