Here is my 48” x 48” x .375” table. I have a German made mag drill and used a Milwaukee carbide tipped annular cutter with generous amounts of WD40 for lube. It took a few hours to drill the 552 holes. The extra holes you see are for other items I attach to the table like a bender and a chain pipe vise.
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Looks nice 
!
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Looks good. My Hougen bit lost a tooth after 56 holes. I’m not sure if it’s the template causing chip evacuation issues or? Plenty of coolant each hole but after each row of 11 things are toasty that there’s no way I could drill out an entire table top surface one go.
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I drilled 3 or 4 rows per day so the annular cutter never really got above 120 degrees, I have an infrared non contact thermometer. The Milwaukee cutter has definite wear showing on the carbide tips but was still cutting well on the last hole. I would drill about an 1/8 inch, pull up and give it a good shot of WD40 then drill another 1/8 inch, rinse and repeat. Other than the paint wearing off from drill shavings brushing the top, my template is in beautiful condition after the 552 holes drilled.
I’ll have to mess with a couple techniques. Haven’t checked temps but the last few got smokin hot in a hurry. Also considering making a custom center punch device that utilizes the template and drill without it for each row. Need to figure out something because I still have 800 to go.
Does your drill have coolant? I will say WD40 is not much of a lubricant in my opinion. When I drilled my first table I used coolant in my mag drill and had good luck. but that table was blanchard ground.
I did not use a template and I am sure that helped keep things cool.
Yes, flooding with the manufactured specified coolant. Each hole.
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