How to Drill a Square Hole

Okay, so this is actually pretty cool. This video features an animation that shows how one could theoretically drill square holes. We’ve seen ways to make round holes into squares, but not an actual process for drilling square holes.

What this looks like is a rotor out of a rotary engine, which happens to be the right shape for creating a square when it’s rotated. Add to that some hardened metal tooling to do the actual material removal and you could, at least in theory, drill a square hole. The one small issue that could arise is that the setup doesn’t make ninety degree corners, it leaves them slightly rounded, but a quick hit with a file could clean those up if needed.

This animation makes it look easy, but there have been plenty of times things that work well in theory don’t quite pan out in the real world. We’ll have to see if anybody puts this animation into real-world testing.