Talk about deburring, please

"A cause, long hidden that needs dragging into open debate," says Martin Bridges, sales manager at Deburring Centre. "We've found a three-fold increase in enquiries over the last year. Where 5-axis machining and carbide tooling might produce the headlines, it's deburring that produces the bottleneck and quality issues." Although the brochure focuses on thermal deburring - one of the fastest and cheapest methods of removing burrs - it's aim is to raise the debate on deburring in general. Manual deburring has been the de facto method for years, but when machining quality and tolerances have improved no end, hand deburring still fluctuates widely and can cause damage. Many machines are now programmed to 'deburr' in cycle, often by chamfering edges. While this is often adequate on external edges it still leaves a problem with internal cross holes and awkward to reach edges. Expectations of quality are always increasing, and dealing with potentially loose internal burrs in safety critical applications has become paramount. Thermal deburring uses a gas that under pressure permeates every bore and surrounds every burr. When it is ignited the heat wave at 3,000 °C passing through the component causes the burrs to surpass their ignition point and oxidize. The total amount of heat generated though, barely raising the temperature of the component to 150 °C. Anything that doesn't come off in the blast of heat will not come off in service. Download the brochure from Deburring Centre's website.