I work a lot with 1/2" latvian birch plywood and I often need to make a hole that is a 1/4" diameter. I'm often making several pocket and contour cuts with a 1/4" down spiral endmill at the same time and I would like to avoid changing out bits when I might otherwise do all my milling operations with one bit.
My question is this: How should I accomplish these 1/4" diameter holes? I run into this same challenge sometimes with my 1/8" bits too. It is tempting to just peck drill my way through with the endmill. It seems to be up to the challenge when I use it to mark my initial work holding locations on the sheet face.
More daringly, I could just drill straight through with these endmills as long as the sheet thickness isn't to many multiples of the endmill diameter.
The plywood seems to do okay with this sort of behaviour but I've read several posts maligning the use of endmills for any kind of drilling. On the other hand, using smaller bits and doing helical ramping to the bottom of the hole seems a little involved, silly and takes time. Any help in addressing this common need to drill holes is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance. Mike