ENGINEERS at Cardiff University claim to have drilled the world’s tiniest hole.

They have made a device that can drill a hole measuring 22 microns (0.022mm) in stainless steel and other materials. A human hair, at between 50 and 80 microns, would be far too fat to go through such a hole.

Frank Marsh, marketing director of the university’s Manufacturing Engineering Centre, said: “The holes we are now drilling in Cardiff with the electro-discharge machining (EDM) process could be the smallest in the world.”

The process is achieved by creating a minute electrode with a diameter of only 6 microns (0.006 mm), which was itself produced by manufacturing a highly precise wire electrode discharge grinder.

“The standard rods available commercially are capable of making holes of 150 microns. Although lasers are able to make small holes these are of poorer quality when compared to the EDM process,” he said.

Just what use these tiny holes are remains to be seen. “Sometimes research is ahead of application,” said Mr Marsh. But he believes that they are likely to find uses in drug development and electronic circuitry.

The ability to produce such tiny holes could also benefit designers in the medical and laboratory sciences as well as electronic design engineers in creating smaller electronic systems, which will cover a wide range of industrial and consumer industries, the university said.

Far from resting on their laurels, the Cardiff engineers are aiming smaller. In the new year, the centre’s scientists will acquire new equipment that will enable them to make even smaller holes and add surface materials of tiny thicknesses to finish optical, medical and other components.

The centre is not only interested in tiny holes. Earlier this month it claimed that hill farmers could make more money out of growing daffodils than breeding sheep. Centre researchers said that a substance found in the Welsh national flower could help in the battle against Alzheimer’s. They have turned over acres of land in the Black Mountains in Powys, mid Wales, to growing a certain species of daffodil rich in the chemical galanthamine.

Scientists claim that the substance can help alleviate memory loss and so will carry out further tests, offering hope to the estimated 700,000 sufferers in the UK. Mr Marsh said: “Galanthamine has major investment potential. The potential for Welsh hill farms is huge. The benefits are extensive, not only to Welsh bioscience and the pharmaceutical industry but also to the ageing population.”

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