If you've ever made a slotted lauter tun manifold then you probably know of several ways to cut the slots. Anyone ever run across a tool to deburr the inside of those slots? I'm building a manifold with curved sections of tubing and its not obvious to me how I'm going to inside deburr. Because of the curves, I can't really slide a straight instrument in there to deburr. I've experimented with a spinning tube brush, but it doesn't work. The slots (from a fine hacksaw blade, in this case) are about .029" and the material thickness is .035. I can't get an fine point exacto blade in the slot at a steep enough angle to deburr. It looks to me like the solution is going to be a tool that deburrs from the outside of the slot, through the slot, deburring the backside. There are numerous dedicated deburring tools available, almost none are for such fine tolerance work. Except perhaps one. A deburring spiral brush. They're for deburring cross holes (holes drilled through tubing). They might work for slots. They look very much like your bottle or carboy brush except with brass or stainless bristles and, of course, very, very, very, very much smaller. In fact they go down to .022"! Don't drop that bad boy; it'll disappear faster than a keg of Guiness at an Irish wake. They're doable at about $5-$9 apiece. They come as either a manual version with a loop for your fingers, or without the loop so you can chuck it in something. Whaddya think? Any better deburring ideas?
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- Thread starter ldave
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smooreland
Member
Personally, I used a combination of a small file kit from Home Depot in conjunction with a set of old dental tools I picked up at an antique store. The dental tools worked the best at deburring slots, but were all broken in the process.
Nothing seemed ideal, and I just had to bear through it, crap process that it was. Worked in the end though. I used a thin grinder disc which made terrible burrs.
I'll post a pic of my mani tomorrow for you.
Nothing seemed ideal, and I just had to bear through it, crap process that it was. Worked in the end though. I used a thin grinder disc which made terrible burrs.
I'll post a pic of my mani tomorrow for you.
milldoggy
Well-Known Member
I took a copper deburring brush, broke the handle, tied a string to the metal and pulled it through
Does it matter? I never bothered to deburr my copper manifold. I haven't noticed any ill effects but maybe I'm not paying close enough attention. Is it just cosmetic?
smooreland
Member
Eh, why wait for tomorrow. Needs a bit of a soak, but you get the idea of how much deburring went into this project.
And then I leave it dirty....
Not many batches yet, but nothing stuck either.
Hope this helps.
azscoob
Brewpub coming soon!
Try tying a chunk of coarse scotchbrite pad onto a length of wire and pulling it through the pipe a few times.
Rockape66
Well-Known Member
I didn't bother to deburr the inside, just the outside. Question though; why did you solder your manifold joints? They don't need to be water tight, or hold pressure. I left mine as slide apart, and figured that would be easier for cleaning.
A smaller piece of pipe or rod run through will remove the burrs.
smooreland
Member
Read up quite a bit on it beforehand, believe me. I found it a bit too cumbersome to leave it unsoldered. It really comes down to personal preference since either way works. If you clean the manifold directly after use, it's not hard to clean. When left dirty, just soak the manifold in a bleach solution and power off any gunk with a water jet.
Not really much extra work I found. Personally, I hated when it was just disconnected bits.
A good compromise is solder just parts of it so you will have straight runs to clean.
A dimple on the females parts will make it tight when assembled.
A dimple on the females parts will make it tight when assembled.
smooreland
Member
Good idea. I'll have to try that for my next build. Thanks.
So this is where I'm at so far. Before ya'll go crazy on me on account of unnecessary complexity, keep in mind I already have a have simpler design in play that's operating in a system with 82%-87% efficiency numbers; it's just harder to implement because it doesn't self-evacuate its air. This design should. I use DIMs: drop-in manifolds, with no kettle spigot-so they syphon. Please don't bother offering your criticisms of any of the above-I'm stubborn and I won't listen to them. Assume I have my reasons.
Now, you can see that the curves in the tubing make some of the suggestions impossible. I can't even see when the deburring would be complete. It's not soldered yet, so I can slot individual runs. It will be soldered, though, everywhere except the gooseneck T and the rubber stoppered T.
Soaking does't remove stuff impaled on burrs very well. Good machining always involves either burr-less cutting or burr removal. If it hasn't occurred to (at least) to remove burrs after machining, then we're just not going to get along very well
. If it did occurr to you, but couldn't really figure out how to do it, then we'll get along. If you did deburr yer thing, then I love you, please post.I've tried the tube brush back/forth and spinning. Spinning just plain doesn't work. Back/forth might work, but pulling through those bends isn't going to be fun, and I have no way of knowing when it's done.
The scotch brite pad is one I haven't tried. I think it might grab the burr better but, again, is going to be a back/forth process that I can't see. Please don't clean yer copper with bleach. It will hate you.
The dental instruments is an intrigueing idea. Hardware store, huh? I'll check that out.
Finally, my research has turned up the way machinists handle this problem. It's called slot cutting and they use a tool that doesn't create a burr to begin with (as I suspected. With machinists, there's always a tool for that). It's an end mill cutter. It's sort of a router bit for metals, usually made of solid carbide. It has fluted, helical cutting surfaces similar to a drill bit, but designed for side cutting. They can be made to plunge. Surprisingly, they are available at the 1/32" dimension. Based on this, I've discovered a carbide cutting bit in my dremel kit that does work for this kind of thing. It leaves a burr on the top of the work (with is easy to deal with), but a very tiny burr on the inside of the work. Of course, it's way too big for this purpose but it is proof-of-concept. I've noticed that the necessary rpm's to drive these tools goes up as the diameter of tool goes down. So it remains to be seen whether a dremel (at 30,000 rpm) can drive a 1/32" bit. They're not cheap ($20-$40 per), but for this purpose, one should last forever. I'll get with a machine shop supply store on this.
