View A Video on Deburring Equipment - A Quick Introduction
Deburring Equipment
A large amount of money is spent each year on machining costs by industrial manufacturing companies for machined parts such as fasteners, tubes and various forgings. Additional industries that utilize
deburring machines include: electronics, for printed circuit boards (PCBs) and other types of computer hardware; construction, for building material applications such as tiles and marble countertops; automotive and aviation, for transmission lines, fuel injectors, engine pistons, metal body frames and more; and medical, for surgical instruments such as steel medical drills, implants and dental tools. Not only used for deburring,
finishing equipment can also be referred to as
vibratory finishing equipment and
polishing machines, since they can also burnish, polish, smooth and protectively coat various parts and materials.
Deburring can be accomplished through the use of wet or dry deburring media. Deburring media refers to materials that enable burr removal while not harming the other parts of the material or part's surface. Some commonly used types of dry deburring media include ceramic media, synthetic plastic media and natural media, such as corn cob media. Possibly the most common, ceramic media are abrasive and are most often used on hard metals such as steel and stainless steel. Typically formed from silica with the addition of other abrasive elements, ceramic media are available in a variety of pre-formed shapes including cylinders, triangles, cones, wedges and ellipses. While not generally as abrasive as ceramic media, synthetic plastic media are used on softer metals and materials such as aluminum. Available in a wide variety of shapes, synthetic plastic media, also referred to as plastic grits, include polycarbonate, polyester and acrylics. Plastic media can also be wet, and are often used in tumbling barrels in this form, thus making them also referred to as tumbling media. A more environmentally-friendly type of deburring media, corn cob media can achieve very fine finishes and absorb unwanted particles such as oils, grease and dirt. Used on soft metals such as brass and bronze, corn cob media is both clean and effective. Other types of natural deburring media include walnut shells.
There are various types of automated deburring machinery including flat surface finishers, polishing lathes and abrasive belts. However, the two main categories of deburring equipment are vibratory tumblers and rotational tumblers. Vibratory finishing utilizes vibrations within drum-like enclosures, such as barrels, to create friction between the deburring media and the part requiring finishing or deburring. A common process in many industries, vibratory finishing is also referred to as mass finishing, and the various types of equipment include vibratory tumblers and parts tumblers. Widely used as a type of polishing equipment, tumblers are barrels within which parts or materials are subjected to constant vibrations and friction that continuously grind and polish away burrs. Parts tumblers are incredibly similar, but are often much larger and are specifically designed to deburr mechanical parts versus unformed materials. Rotational deburring equipment also includes tumbling barrels; however, the deburring is accomplished in a significantly different fashion. In rotational finishing, instead of vibrations the tumbling barrels are spun or rotationally moved in order to mimic the same kind of erosion that would occur naturally in the environment. Additional deburring supplies that allow for manual deburring include nylon filament brushes and cloth or rubber wheels that feature the addition of abrasive compounds in order to buff, polish and deburr various parts and materials.
Deburring is necessary for a wide variety of materials, including metal, wood and plastic. While metals and plastics will feature raised edges and other pultrusions, wood burrs typically arise in the shape of chips, shavings and splinters. The two most common methods of deburring for woodworking include sanding and filing. While vibratory and rotational or tumbling deburring remain the two most popular methods of deburring for plastics and metals, a relatively new technique is being introduced called electrochemical deburring (ECD) that can be used on metal materials. ECD is a deburring technique that utilizes electrical energy that can be controlled and thus used to selectively deburr areas or parts or materials, rather than requiring the whole part or material to be deburred in order to achieve the deburral of one area. During the process, pressured electrolyres are used to flush away the unwanted materials that have been removed by the electrical energy. In addition, the tool and the workpiece do not come into contact during the process, which is an advantage because that means that the workpiece is not exposed to any kind of mechanical or thermal stress. This type of deburring can only be done on clean, conductive materials, but is the only possible deburring method for materials that cannot otherwise be scratched or altered in any way.
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Image Provided by A.E.
Aubin Company |
Image Provided by Giant
Finishing, Inc. |
Deburring Equipment Types
- is a process that
produces a low-pressure abrasion action by tumbling work pieces in
a hexagonal or octagonal barrel together with an abrasive media.
- machines are essentially barrel machines and the name describes
the spinning disc at the bottom of the machine that spins
the part and abrasive media together.
- is able to process high volume parts
on a constant basis through in-line production.
- Corn cob media is a type of dry deburring media that consists of a treated corn cob ring that has been pulverized into
powder form, although the particle size can range from fine to moderate
dimensions.
- remove burrs from metal and plastic parts.
- Deburring media refers to materials used to remove unwanted materials, called burrs, from various parts.
- Finishing equipment refers to a variety of machinery that perform actions that affect the
surface characteristics of parts or materials, such as polishing,
coating, burnishing and deburring.
- are versatile machines
that can be set up for either continuous processing or batch processing
for extended time
cycles.
- Parts tumbler are used for the finishing, polishing and deburring of both plastic and metal parts.
- , or a polishing machine, is used in many types of deburring. Examples
range from the barrel or vibratory tumbler as well as non-enclosed
options
like Nylon Abrasive Filament (NAF) brushes or standard hand held sandpapers
and filers.
- is
also a type of deburring machinery which produces a desired effect.
Rather than the metal part being immersed
in polishing media, as in the case of vibratory or barrel tumblers,
the part surface is blasted from the outside by the appropriate media
which is often small ceramic pieces or even walnut shells in the case
of softer plastic parts. See Sandblast
Equipment.
- Tumblers have two main types: rotary tumblers and vibratory tumblers.
- Tumbling barrels are a type of deburring machinery typically used on hard metals such as steel and stainless steel for the removal of heavy burrs.
- is the abrasive material used in deburring.
- is the burr removal process in which an appropriate
number of parts, depending on part size and abrasive material, is
accelerated and decelerated by mechanical means inside of a drum-like
enclosure.
- are one type of deburring
machinery. Often similar in shape and technology as the barrel machines,
but are open at
the top allowing the ability to view the progress of the deburring
without
stopping the machine.
Deburring Equipment Terms
Technically
any material that can be used to abrade another material. In industry
however, abrasives are
minerals from a select group of very hard minerals used to shape, finish,
polish or deburr another material. - Polishing method using a soft cloth and very fine polishing
compounds.
- Undesirable protrusions and metal edges that result from
machining operations.
- Often referred to as sandpaper. This is used
on machines such as disc sanders and is often used by hand. Often a synthetic
mineral is coated on the paper or fiber rather than actual sand.
- The texture of groups or masses of minerals is said to
be crystalline when distinct crystal faces are present.
- Refers to grinding machines and a process using
the face of a large wheel to produce flat and parallel surfaces
in high volume production.
- The intersection of two surfaces.
- A measurement of surface characteristics of a workpiece.
- A characteristic of abrasive grains that describes
their tendency to fracture or break apart then hit or placed under pressure.
- A natural abrasive that contains aluminum oxide and small
amounts of iron oxide. Once used extensively in the finishing industry,
it is used today mostly in home workshops for deburring by hand.
- A group of processes that use abrasives to remove
burrs or apply a finish to small workpieces.
- The abrasive pellets, stones or other materials used in
mass finishing and deburring. Examples are silicon carbide, ice, plastic,
sand and walnut shells.
- A process using very fine abrasive minerals for little
or no material removal. The step of finishing that often comes just after
deburring when needed. Surface appearance is the primary purpose of polishing.
- This synthetic mineral is one of the abrasives
used extensively in the finishing industry. It his harder than aluminum
oxides.
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