Drill
At a glance
- Drills at the center of valid circular holes—same hole detection rules as Bore
- Single plunge, partial retract, or full retract peck cycles
- Peck distance, optional rapid retracts, and feed retracts when rapid retract is off
Drill plunges at the center of every valid circular hole on its layer — closed hole geometry that resolves to a single circle, the same detection rule Bore uses. Anything else on the layer is skipped during generation. It's the fastest way to run a hole pattern where the hole diameter matches the bit; for holes larger than any cutter you own, use Bore instead.
Cycle types
The Passes tab offers three cycles. Single Plunge feeds straight to depth in one motion. Partial Retract pecks down by Peck Distance (default 0.1"), lifting by Retract Distance (default 0.025") between pecks to break the chip without leaving the hole. Full Retract returns all the way to the feed plane between pecks — the classic deep-hole cycle for clearing chips. Rapid Retract is on by default; turn it off and retracts run at a Retract Feedrate you set instead.
Tools and heights
Drill accepts dedicated drill tools (with their included point angle) plus flat, ball, and bullnose endmills from the tool library. Plunge feedrate comes from the tool and stays linked to plunge feed per revolution. The operation uses Tool, Heights, and Passes tabs only — no leads, direction, or tabs, since there's no XY motion in the cut.
By default posts emit drilling as explicit Z peck and retract moves that run anywhere. The MASSO
and LinuxCNC Router posts also have a useDrillCycles option that folds drill operations into
canned G81/G82/G83/G73 cycles if your controller prefers them.