The purpose of this project was to determine if applying negative potential to a drill bit used to drill concrete would significantly increase its drilling performance. Negative potential was required for a current to attempt to flow since the concrete samples were already positively charged by natural processes in the concrete.
A pulley was attached to the arm of the drill press to provide a constant and even application of force to the drill bit. The pulley was constructed by positioning a coffee can around the arm of the drill press and tying a weight to it with a long string wound around it. Uniform concrete test blocks were created by pouring concrete into Styrofoam cups.
For the trials with a negative potential applied to the drill bit, a wire was run from a power supply through a wire looped around the upper exposed end of drill bit. The drill press was insulated from the charge by wrapping emery paper around the part of the drill bit in the chuck. Each trial lasted exactly one minute. For the trials without a negative potential applied, the same procedure was used excluding the wire setup. In all of the trials, uniform concrete test blocks were drilled into.
After organizing the data it became apparent that the drill bit with negative potential applied did significantly better in drilling depth than the drill bit without the negative potential applied in almost every instance.