Deburring

E-Z Burr Tool Co. will continue to operate as an independent entity out of the deburring tool manufacturer’s Livonia, Mich., facility, with little or no change in procedures or processes, reports purchaser Cogsdill Tool Products Inc., Camden, S.C. The sale closed Jan. 3.

For our February issue’s Industry Briefs department, I’m writing an article about the Deburring Application Laboratory at Matrix Design LLC. The company designs, builds and installs robotic automation systems for deburring parts, as well as machine tending and material handling.

At the BWM Group's engine plant in Steyr (Austria), in a reference project accompanied by the Technical University of Vienna, Ecoclean Monschau has significantly raised the energy efficiency of a flexible EcoCFlex Classic robot cell that had been in service for several years. The system's electric power and water consumption were each cut by around 30 percent. These energy efficiency measures are now intended to be implemented on another 95 systems of the same type installed at various sites throughout Europe and Asia.

For today’s manufacturers of precision components, there’s no getting around deburring, rounding and polishing. These production steps are often seen as a necessary evil due to the high costs associated with them in some cases. Use of the right technology permits reliable processing at reduced costs.

A profile of Basin Precision Machining LLC in the Jefferson Co. (Wisconsin) Daily Union describes the company's pioneering use of an ATL iTEM400/600 thermal deburring machine--the first to be used in the U.S. In the feature, Basin president and CEO Erik Anderson contrasts traditional deburring via cutting or drilling with the new ATL process: "We actually take the sharp edges off of a part with an explosion." The machine uses a controlled explosion to generate 6,000 degrees in 20 milliseconds, which oxidizes burrs off of a part.