A drill is a tool designed to do two things: make holes in materials and drive fasteners like screws. That simple description undersells how many places drills show up. From hanging a shelf to extracting oil miles underground to recovering ancient ice for climate research, drills are one of the most widely used tools in existence. The version most people encounter is the handheld power drill, but the same core principle (a rotating bit that cuts or bores through material) scales from dental offices to deep-sea drilling platforms.
The Two Core Functions of Any Drill
Every drill, regardless of size, performs one or both of two jobs. The first is boring holes. A rotating bit cuts into wood, metal, plastic, masonry, or bone, removing material to create a cylindrical opening. The second is driving screws. Most modern power drills include a reverse function that lets you both insert and remove screws, making them as useful for assembly as they are for demolition.
These two functions make the drill arguably the most versatile tool in any toolkit. Hanging curtain rods, assembling flat-pack furniture, installing a deck, wiring a house, mounting a TV: all of these tasks rely on some combination of drilling holes and driving screws.
Handheld Power Drills for Home and Jobsite
The standard cordless drill is what most people picture when they hear the word. These run on rechargeable batteries, and the voltage rating gives you a rough sense of their power. A 12V drill handles everyday household tasks like drilling into wood or drywall, assembling furniture, and installing cabinetry. It’s lightweight, affordable, and sufficient for most homeowners. An 18V or 20V drill steps up to semi-heavy work: masonry, concrete, steel, or large deep holes in wood. At 36V to 40V, you’re into heavy-duty territory suited for professionals who drill into hard materials all day.
Higher voltage translates to more torque (rotational force) and more speed. But for routine jobs around the house, a 12V model is often the best balance of capability and convenience.
Hammer Drills
A standard drill spins, and that’s it. A hammer drill adds a rapid forward tapping motion on top of the rotation, essentially chipping away at the material while the bit turns. This makes it the right tool for drilling into concrete, brick, stone, and other masonry. The mechanism uses two interlocking plates that push forward and slip back thousands of times per minute, transferring a chipping force through the bit. If you need to anchor something into a concrete wall or a brick fireplace, a regular drill will struggle or stall. A hammer drill won’t.
Impact Drivers
Impact drivers look similar to drills but serve a different purpose. Instead of forward tapping force, they deliver rotational impacts using a hammer-and-anvil mechanism inside the tool. A spring-loaded plate compresses, separates, and slams back together rapidly, generating high torque. This makes impact drivers ideal for driving large screws, lag bolts, and other fasteners, especially into dense wood or metal. They’re more compact than hammer drills because they skip the clutch and multiple speed settings, using a simpler quarter-inch hex chuck that only accepts hex-shanked bits.
The practical distinction: hammer drills are for making holes in hard materials, impact drivers are for driving fasteners with less effort and wrist strain.
Matching Drill Bits to Materials
The drill itself is only half the equation. The bit you attach determines what materials you can work with and how clean the result will be.
- Wood: Brad-point, spade, and Forstner bits produce clean cuts with minimal splintering and precise hole placement.
- Metal: High-speed steel (HSS) bits handle soft metals and plastics. Cobalt-alloy bits withstand higher temperatures and cut through stainless steel and hardened alloys.
- Masonry and concrete: Carbide-tipped bits paired with hammer drills are the standard. SDS-Plus and SDS-Max bits are designed specifically for rotary hammer drills and handle aggressive dust removal.
- Glass and ceramic tile: Diamond-coated or spear-point bits make gradual, controlled cuts that prevent shattering or chipping. These require lubrication (usually water) during drilling.
Tip angle matters too. A 118-degree tip works well for softer metals, while a 135-degree split-point design grips harder materials better and keeps the bit from wandering across the surface. Using the wrong bit for a material doesn’t just give poor results. It can crack tile, burn wood, or snap the bit entirely.
Medical and Dental Uses
Drills are essential in medicine, though they look nothing like the tool in your garage. In orthopedic surgery, drills bore holes into bone so that screws, pins, or nails can be inserted to stabilize fractures. The concept is identical to drilling into wood and driving a screw, just performed on living tissue at much smaller scales and with strict temperature control. Bone drills typically operate between a few hundred and several thousand RPM, though specialized dental drills can reach speeds above 40,000 RPM.
Heat is the primary concern. Bone tissue dies when it gets too hot, so surgeons use cooling systems (often sterile saline irrigation) to keep temperatures safe during drilling. In dentistry, drills prepare cavities for fillings and shape tooth structure for crowns or implants. The high-speed rotation paired with water cooling allows precise material removal without damaging surrounding tissue.
Oil, Gas, and Mining
At the industrial scale, drilling is how we access energy and mineral resources buried deep underground. Oil and gas companies drill wells that can extend miles below the surface, or miles below the ocean floor in offshore operations. Before any well is drilled, geological surveys using seismic imaging map subsurface formations to identify where oil or gas is likely trapped. The drill then creates a wellbore, a narrow shaft through layers of rock, through which hydrocarbons are eventually extracted.
Mining operations use similar principles. Core drilling extracts cylindrical samples of rock from underground, allowing geologists to analyze mineral deposits before committing to full-scale extraction. These core samples reveal the composition, depth, and quality of ore bodies, helping companies decide whether a site is worth developing.
Scientific Research and Climate History
Some of the most valuable drilling happens in places no one plans to extract resources from. In Antarctica, scientists spent eight years drilling into the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to recover an ice core that preserves 68,000 years of climate history. The core, made up of cylinders just 4.8 inches in diameter, contains trapped air bubbles that reveal the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases at the time the snow originally fell. Researchers can reconstruct past surface air temperatures, wind patterns, sea ice extent, and even average ocean temperatures from these samples.
The drilling stopped 164 feet above the bedrock to avoid contaminating a possible water layer at the ice-rock boundary. This kind of precision illustrates how drilling in a research context demands as much care as any surgical procedure. Similar ice and sediment core drilling projects around the world have built much of what we know about how Earth’s climate has shifted over tens of thousands of years.
Staying Safe While Drilling
Power drills spin fast and generate flying debris. Safety goggles are non-negotiable for any drilling task, whether you’re going through wood, metal, or masonry. Gloves protect your hands from sharp edges on drill bits and hot metal shavings. When drilling into concrete or stone, the dust produced can irritate your lungs, so a dust mask is a smart addition.
Beyond protective gear, a few practical habits prevent most drill-related injuries. Always use the right bit for the material. Inspect bits for damage before use, since a cracked or dull bit is more likely to catch, snap, or wander off target. Secure your workpiece with clamps rather than holding it by hand, especially with smaller pieces that can spin violently if the bit catches. And let the drill do the work. Pressing too hard increases heat, dulls the bit faster, and raises the risk of the bit binding and jerking the tool out of your grip.