deburring inside drilled tubing? (2023 Update)

Would it be possible to jig up something on a drill press or lathe so that this could be done semi automatically?

If you mounted a three jaw on the center of a drill press table that would hold the tube.

Then have a flap wheel in the normal chuck and run the tube up and down by adjusting the table height.

Or perhaps if you mount a drill press at an angle you could run the tube in and out by hand.

You'd need an extension on the flap wheel but I assume you can figure out how to do that. :-)

DOC

Buy my junk!

Wayne,

Curious if you ever ran across the idea of using a feed control unit to minimize or even eliminate a burr while drilling rather than trying to remove it afterwards?

I get calls from folks looking to do this all the time. We basically sell them a feed control on the unit we provide so that when the bit is about to break through, the feed rate either stays exactly the same or even slows down so the tool doesn't punch through the last part. The burr is then much smaller or even sometimes gone.

Check out this page:

Doing this with a multispindle drill head or when holes are far enough apart, some of our customers do a dozen holes at a time. I suppose the same thing could be done with the deburr tool depending on how it works.

Here is a seven hole head:

If your client has lots and lots of holes to do (1000 a month is not a lot to me but may be for him), tell him to find someone who can sell him a multiple spindle head to attach to his drill press or have him buy a whole system from someone. He will save a lot of time and make money. If his production numbers are not great, then it will probably be too expensive... But he may learn something by talking to the company's application specialist for free anyhow. Multiple spindle drill heads usually go for around $200-400 a hole but need to be mounted on a drill press, a Bridgeport style machine or something similar if not built into an all-in-one system like this one which is Photoshopped but identical to what we put together and sold:

No advertisimg meant, just some ideas for you and your cleint... Feel free to give me a call or leave your number on my machine (number listed on the web pages above) and I'll be glad to have our application guy call you back to see if I can help you find a solution.

Regards, Joe Agro, Jr.

V8013

Cogsdill deburring tool. It's a hollow rod that you chuck into your drill motor. Near the end it has a slot with a "tooth" sticking out the side and by adjusting the set screw in that end you adjust the spring providing tension on the tooth. You simply push it in and out of the hole while spinning the drill and depending on the tension you set, rotation speed, and how long you linger the hole will be deburred, and if you let it work too long you even get a chamfer. The tooth moves out of the way while inside the hole. Very cool tool.

Get 'em on ebay or do a search on the web for sellers. I love using these things, but they take some getting used to because there are three variables that control how much gets cut off. I don't think that for your client's application it will be a big deal, but for mine, a chamfer on the back of a close tolerance hole is a very bad thing.

Perfect choice of words for the method I'll describe.

I was told about this by an old Swiss toolmaker who described it to me. I never saw it in action. They needed to deburr some copper parts they were making. They made up something they called "the bomb". Essentiallly a big metal box. They put the parts inside along with fuel (gasoline?) vapor and touched it off. The flash burned off the burrs. We live in a pretty rural area and his business was way back in the woods where most people didn't know it existed. In the

60's (I think that was the era) he was making parts for the cameras in the U2 spy planes. He had to work to precision somewhere in the millionths. The shop is across the river and about a mile from a railroad yard as the crow flies. The trains induced vibrations in the work which kept him from getting the precision he needed. He had to do the work in the wee hours from Saturday through some time on Sunday since that's the only time they weren't shifting trains around. At any rate, the method certainly was earth shaking. I can't prove he wasn't pulling my leg, but I don't think so; he just didn't impress me as being that kind of guy. He's been dead for a number of years now so I can't inquire about the bomb for you. NO - he didn't die in an explosion.

Bob Lamparter

******* Remove NOSPAM to reply *******

We are drilling the holes through one side of the tube, and not through the tube. This part is done on a mill-drill machine where we crank in the 1" spacing between holes while the tube is held in a standard vice on the drill-mill table. The problem is when the whole is finished, there is a burr on the inside of the tube and we can only use a 90 degree deburring knife to kill the beasts.

Wayne

Thanks Joe, my response has been sent to you directly from your quick reply to my problem in private.

Wayne

This looks interesting. I will pursuie through the Cogsdill site even though my first blush is that a quarter inch dia hole is too small for their tooling.

Wayne

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Thanks Tom... am pursuing this idea as we speak.

I had the pleasure of working alongside Gil Cadwell who pioneered explosive fabrication and several other methods for smashing thin sheet metals into compound irregular shapes. One of them was the use of a sparkplug submerged in water and detonated by a bank of capacitors that created such a huge spark that the water was decomposed into oxygen and hydrogen and in that millisecond exploded to create a miniature atomic bomb in the water. The part itself was set next to a tool which received the now very plastic sheet metal to form it perfectly. The first time they tested the idea the shed blew up. Fortunately he and his crew triggered the explosion from some distance. It became known as Hydroforming.

I don't think gasoline or a well combined air/gas mix would be hot enough to evaporate the burrs from inside the aluminum tube. But it's worth thinking about perhaps as an EDM.

You got me thinking!

You get my private response to your response? :)

Yep

Greetings Wayne, I use the Cogsdill tools a lot. One brand of their tooling is called "Burraway" These tools go as small as .078". And they are adjustable for pressure. Because of the way they work they will follow the edge of a hole drilled in a cylinder-which is exactly what you want. For a

1/4" hole go to and look at part number 05755129. That's the MSC part number. The price is 50 bucks and well worth it. Replacement blades are available if yours get dull. Also, the leading cutting edge can be rounded off if you just want to deburr the inside. So your best route will be to drill a hole with as small a burr as possible and then use the Burraway tool. You can make a setup where the tube is laid into a slot in a piece of wood or plastic that is centered under the spindle. Then use the quill to feed the deburring tool in and out. This will give you great control and will keep the hole centered. Eric R Snow, E T Precision Machine

Thank you. Am forwarding your note to my client who will follow up on this solution.

Wayne

Thank you Eric! I am forwarding this to my client.

Thank you! Am forwarding to my client.

--Cogsdill makes an excellent tool, but if a blade breaks, don't try to insert a new one and get it to work right; better to send the broken one back to the factory and let them do it. --In addition to this method there's always a Rout-a-burr; a little hand-intensive but it works.. --Another method might be abrasive slurry injection or whatever the correct terminology is; don't know much about it but it sure makes for purdy parts at trade shows.. --And finally, assuming you're attaching a second tube at the place where you're making the hole there's a weird little gizmo called the Aushalser, altho at the moment I can't find a link to it; will google a bit more and see if I can find an image..

"Wayne Lundberg" wrote in news:yZyId.14130$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net:

Wayne, Try switching over to Black & Decker "Bullet" drills. These have a small pilot bit ground in the nose, then a relief angle out to the major cutting dia. They make a clean hole, as the outside cuts ahead of the center.

Funny thing is that I use their product on a daily basis (burnishing tool) and never knew they made the deburring tool... Gotta get me one of those and try it out.

I think this may be the answer Wayne's client needs... Now if it could be made as a one piece unit with a drill bit, he could do both operations at the same time... Or if he can somehow space the tool so he can do two at a time, he could drill with a single spindle and deburr with a second on a multi-spindle head... Maybe even all 15 at a time with a large enough machine and then just move the piece 1" and finish off the proicess in a total of two steps...