Other methods to hand deburring drill holes?

[wesD]

Hi all, newbie question:

Currently at my job I deburr drill holes with a Shaviv hand tool. The product we make is standard steel piping about 3" diameter, drill holes are only about 3/8" into the edge of the pipe and about 1/2" in diameter for each drill hole.

The problem is that deburring can become very tedious. 4 holes to each end of a pipe = 8 holes total. Deburring both sides of the drill hole means 16 places deburr for each pipe. Sometimes this can add up to close to 1000 holes to deburr in a day.

I did some googling and was thinking of something called a "carbide burr" attached to a low rpm air grinder. But creating the smooth chamfer requires more finesse than anything else. I tried a home depot grinding bit attached to a 20000 RPM grinder and it totally failed and made the burr worse and chamfer edge uneven.

Any ideas or links to a product?

[Eurisko]

A zero flute or 1 flute countersink bit will give the best result. No chatter and a decent finish. The rounded pipe surface will produce an uneven chamfer.

Here's a link to one supplier's products:

http://www.icscuttingtools.com/catalog/page_184.pdf

[Notebook]

The tools in the previous post will probably do the trick for the outside of your holes (and that's usually the only side where the appearance matters). You will find that the lower your RPM, the better the results. 100-300 RPM is just fine. Experiment with different sizes and cutter geometry, sometimes there can be rather striking differences.

Since you're dealing with fairly large workpieces, it's probably practicable to stick a cheap battery-operated drill upside down in a vise and do the feeding by hand. You'll develop a feel for it quite quickly.