Why Is Deburring Important?
May 09, 2022No matter what industry you’re in, it’s important that your company produces accurate and precise results. When it comes to metal parts and machines, you need to be able to rely on your tools to generate repeatable products that keep your customers and clients satisfied. Having sharp edges on your metal parts can prevent your workpieces from working correctly, damage your machines and even cause injury to anyone handling the metal materials.
With a deburring machine, you can avoid these issues and keep your products working at top performance. In this article, we’ll explore why deburring is important and how it can save you time and money in your business.
What Is Deburring?
Deburring is a critical process used for metal and steel fabrication and manufacturing. During various machining processes, such as folding, welding, casting, stamping or shearing, burrs form and can cause many different issues, similar to a splinter on a piece of wood. Burrs are raised, sharp or jagged pieces of material on a workpiece that affect the quality, longevity and performance of the part.
These burrs can also make it difficult for the metal components to function properly, impacting their ability to withstand pressure, stress or strain. The deburring process is the removal of these sharp burrs and imperfections to create a better-looking and safer product. Deburring reduces friction between metal workpieces and machines, improves their aesthetics and life span, and makes them easier for operators to handle.
The Benefits of Deburring
Deburring metal is important for many reasons and brings several advantages. Deburring your workpieces and equipment improves overall safety in your company, particularly for your workers, operators and consumers. Working with materials that have sharp, rough edges poses many risks to anyone handling your products and materials and could cut or injure them. From fabrication to transport and assembly, removing the burrs reduces the risk of injury involved with the product.
Deburring machines also help keep other machines and tools from getting damaged. When your materials and workpieces are deburred before going through the next step in the fabrication or manufacturing process, there won’t be any sharp edges that could get caught on other parts of machines and interrupt the process or cause additional issues.
Deburring also helps make machines and tools much less susceptible to wear and protects them against damage associated with burrs for longer periods. This can help make the products look better and even allow the paint and other coatings to adhere to the surface more effectively, producing high-quality finishes.
Additionally, the deburring process provides reduced liability. In addition to personal safety, keeping the surface and edges of your products, tools and materials smooth can help you avoid these legal repercussions and produce items that are safe to handle.
Other benefits of deburring include:
- Improved consistency
- Improved edge quality
- Reduced assembly time
- Reduced surface roughness
What Can Happen if You Don’t Deburr Metal?
Removing burrs is critical to quality and safety in your company. While burrs can create potential liabilities and injuries, they can also make the machining process more difficult and unreliable. Burrs can prevent your workpiece or part from staying in the proper location for a fixture or causing inaccurate measurements. If you leave burrs in place, they can also prevent your thread gages and plugs from fitting properly, which can cause rejected parts and interferences with other materials.
With metal workpieces, many parts need to be cut precisely to a certain length to match up to another part, and burrs can create obstacles that throw these measurements out of proportion. These interruptions can make the manufacturing and assembly process much more challenging and drawn out, causing frustration for the worker and consumer.
Even if a part with burrs fits correctly, it could cause that piece to fail or function irregularly. Anything that could eventually rub up against the burrs on the edge of a part could become cut or damaged over time without the user knowing.
Industries that use metal fabrication often require intense precision and attention to detail. Burrs can displace these metal parts and create huge hazards, such as in the food industry. If a piece of metal were to flake off into a food product during manufacturing or transportation, it could present a dangerous health risk to the consumer. The same risk applies to medical devices and products that require metal because rough or sharp edges could harm a patient or medical professional and pose a biohazard.
Tips for Speeding up and Improving Deburring Projects
While deburring is certainly an effective way to keep your metal pieces smooth, operators can use many different deburring methods to work out those rough edges. However, using manual methods requires a lot of physical labor and takes longer to complete, which can hold up the manufacturing process.
With automated deburring, you can speed up this process and create consistent, reliable and accurate results every time. Automated deburring provides enhanced speed, process control and efficiency, making it easier to maintain safety and eliminate any sharp edges that could cause injury.
While it’s critical to have dependable parts in all industries, it’s particularly important for high-value pieces, such as in the automotive and aerospace industries. Deburring with automated machines also helps ensure a better fit and finish for your parts in a shorter amount of time than manual processes.
Additionally, manually deburring equipment leaves room for human error, where even the most experienced metalworkers can create mistakes that can negatively impact your company’s productivity. With automated processes, the quality, speed and efficiency of your production standards will only improve and produce accurate results that meet your needs and enhance your workflow.
When manually conducting the deburring process, the results can easily be different each time. A machine ensures that every part is deburred the same and has the necessary shape and size to work as intended for its application.
Implement Deburring With Finishing Systems
There are many benefits to deburring your metal materials and workpieces. However, finding the right deburring machine is essential to get the job done quickly and efficiently. With Finishing Systems, you can benefit from effectively deburring and polishing your metal parts with our industrial metal tumbler. This machine will tumble your metal components until they meet your desired finish for any application.
We offer various deburring and tumbling machines to help you choose the right equipment for your business. Our deburring machines will easily remove burrs and rough edges to prepare your parts for further finishing, making your manufacturing and machining process simpler and faster.
At Finishing Systems, we want to find the perfect solution for your needs and allow your business to thrive with improved productivity and reduced risks. Fill out our online contact form today to learn more about the equipment and parts we offer and how our dedicated team can exceed your expectations.