Deburring 101: Everything You Need to Know About Deburring

A burr is a revised edge or small piece of material remaining attached to a work piece after a modification. During most machine processes, work pieces become burred, and sharp edges and material compression can occur, which impacts the quality of the part and cause various errors during the assembly process.

From understanding the various deburring processes to purchasing quality rotary tumbling barrels, here is everything you need to know about deburring:

Deburring equipment and machinery

Rotary tumbling barrels and other vibratory finishing equipment are essential for quality deburring. Four elements are significant in vibratory finishing, including: parts, equipment, compound solutions, and media. When choosing media for a deburring or vibratory machine, it should be approximately 70% the size of any hole inside the machine.

How burrs occur

There are three main reasons for burrs occurring in machining:

1. During stamping, fineblanking, and forming
2. During casting, sinter, and molding of material
3. During milling, turning, drilling, and grinding

Deburring Processes

Here are some of the most popular deburring processes:

• Manual deburring -- This is the most common process because it is the most flexible. Additionally, it only requires low cost tools and can allows for instant inspection.
• Electrochemical deburring --This involves the use of electrochemical machining to deburr precision work pieces and edges that are difficult to access. The process involves salt or glycol solution, along with electricity, to dissolve the burr.
• Thermal energy method -- This process can remove hard-to-reach burrs from multiple surfaces at the same time. Thermal deburring involves explosive gas mixtures and is the fastest burr removal process, securing only 20 milliseconds to remove a burr.
• Mechanical deburring -- This is a deburring process that either grinds a burr off of metal or rolls the edge of silt into itself.
• Cryogenic deburring -- This process is used to remove burrs and flash from die cast and plastic workpieces. This process works by abrasively blasting the workpieces at cryogenic temperature levels.

If you want to learn more about deburring and find quality rotary tumbling barrels, metal tumbler machines, and other vibratory finishing machines for sale, give AccuBrass a call right away.