Deburring

[9566317]

I am producing about 5000 parts a week out of aluminum cast A356 heat treated to a T6 spec. These parts are to be burr free after machining.My problem is the internal cross holes that intersect.They are on average a hole diameter of 3 mm.
At present I have 6 people sitting and doing the deburring by hand but like all hand work they miss and I get big complaints.I have done a lot of reseach on this problem and have found that ECD is and probably will work quite well but the expense is huge.(was quoted Half mill.) Is anyone else out there having this problem and come up with a reasonable solution?
Thank you in advace and hope this is in the right area to post this.

[Heavy D]

we did some aluminnum valve bodies that had to be free of burrs and scratches on machined surfaces. 18,000/week 1200pcs/shift. There were 2 cross holes that had to be deburred. To speed up the deburring process, we made a handle that fit comfortably in your hand and put a drill with points rounded off (to prevent damage to the part) in it. They just went in the hole with the drill, 1 turn and the burr was gone. The burrs we had were thick as we had aggressive feedrates to put 1200pcs though a daewoo in 8 hours.

If you have the cycle time, you could try going back in the hole with the drill to knock the burr off but you may end up with positional problems or out of round holes. we did not have that problem by hand and I have not tried this on a machine.. just an idea.

If your burrs break off easily, we have used nylon abasive brushes from Weiler Corperation in the past. They work quite well.

[dertsap]

there are sub contract companies out there that flash the parts with a burst of extreme heat burrs vapourize ,having no ill effect on the part itself ,i know of a couple of companies that send there parts out to have this done , and apparently the parts are perfect , with no distortion to tightly toleranced parts
check out this link for an idea of what i mean
http://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/18905