Gear Deburring

Electrochemical Process for Deburring
"Electrochemical deburring process is providing the gear manufacturers an interesting alternative. It is offereing especially for lower-volume operations:

Extended life
Improved finish

The Deburring process of gears makes the parts capable of a performance for which they were designed. It eliminates all the unwanted elements that obstructs their productivity. Over the years deburring process has changed considerably. There have been rapid advancements made with regard to the types of tools used for deburring operations.

Types of Tools in Gear Deburring Process
There are mainly three types of tools that are applied for application in the gear deburring process. A brief outline of each of the methods are given here:

Grinding Wheels
There are many types of wheel grits that are found available for use in gear deburring process. Consider a 320 grit that is used for light chamfers and small burrs. To say a 57 grit used in large burrs and heavy chamfers, along with various grit sizes in between them. Grinding wheels normally provides the requisite cosmetic appearance for a gear that is deburred part. Three factors affecting chamber size are:

Wheel grit size
Speed of the work spindle
Quantum of pressure applied to the part by the grinding wheel.

Bushes
Gear parts with small burrs are efficiently deburred with a brush. Two kinds of brushes are used in deburring processes. Wire and nylon. Wire brushes are made up of straight, crimped, or with knotted bristles. The diameter along with length of the wire ascertains how fast the brush will deburr. In cases of Nylon brushes, they can be impregnated with aluminum oxide or even with silicon carbide. The grit size ranges from 80 - 400. It is the application that decides which type of brush is needed.

Carbide Tools
Applying of carbide deburring tools is a recent phenomenon. Let's consider the advantages:

Considerable reduction in deburring time. The carbide tools has been seen to function at 40,000 RPM. That's quite a feat in comparison to 15,000 to 18,000 RPM for the grinding wheels.
Lessening of setup time, as there is no requirement for establishing an approach angle in comparison to a grinding wheel.
Capacity for deburring cluster gears, or gears that has the root of its tooth close to the hub or gear shaft.

Gear Deburring Machines
The deburring process takes place in machines that has deburring heads with a floating-styles and variable RPM air motors or turbines. The floating heads consist of counterweights that are air-operated, and fully adjustable. These are meant for adjusting the pressure applied to a part getting deburred. The floating heads normally use either grinding wheels, brushes or the carbide tools. The change-over from one to another is done quickly. This flexibility offers an option for carrying out a number of different parts on a single machine. Two types of Deburring machine is discussed here:

Types of Gear Deburring Machines
» Dry Deburring Machines
The dry machine is named like this because here the deburring operation taking place is dry. These e machines are normally fitted with a dust collection system. Deburring through a dry machine is accomplished very well if the parts are cleaned and dried before hand.

» Wet Deburring Machine
In case of a wet deburring machine, a rust preventative non-foaming is applied in the parts on an on going deburring process. This makes the part clean and can flush away the deburred particles. Subsequently the part is blown dry while the rust preventative continues to stay on the part as a protective film.