Deburring and Gear Deburring
Deburring can be a major process of machining and gear tooth generation. Mostly the deburring process will also additionally affect the surface finish of the component, whether good or bad. Burrs, while only sometimes created when the tool enters a part, will always be created as a cutting tool exits a part. Ensuring that the tools being used to cut workpieces is sharp is a way to prevent large burrs.
Gear Deburring is necessary due to the smooth gear mesh necessary for the demand on today’s gear applications beyond cosmetic purposes. The choice of deburring method greatly depends on a number of factors, i.e. type of gear, material and customer’s specification. The two main methods of gear deburring are abrasive brushing and grinding. In general brushing a gear is preferred over other methods due to their creation of less grit that can get in between the gear teeth, a much longer tool life than something like a grinding wheel, and less strenuous setups. The major downside to brushing a gear over grinding a gear would be the lack of ability to cut a chamfer into the teeth.
A major consideration during the gear deburring process would be the brush or wheel being used to perform the deburring or chamfering process. The material of the workpiece and the diametral pitch of the gear will determine the wheel or brush to be used. The material is important to the method used for deburring in that if you use the wrong brush or wheel it may not do enough and cause the method to lengthen the lead time unnecessarily. An aggressive brush should be chosen depending on the severity of the brush. The general rule would be the more severe the burr the more aggressive the brush should be to combat that burr whereas with grinding the finest grit possible should be used to ensure a quality finish on the gear tooth. This will also give the best grinding wheel life in addition to finish quality.
The material being used for a component is also important for other machined components, but also the methods that can be used for deburring is expanded. Some of these methods include flat sanding, where the face of a component, is run across a particular grit of sandpaper in order to improve the finish and remove burrs that have curled onto the face of the part. In this case it is also important to use the finest grit sandpaper possible to achieve the customer specifications while being time efficient. Another major consideration of deburring would be subjecting the component to additional machining operations in order to remove the burrs from a previous operation or even reprogramming a machining operation to take off the burr during the operation.
Burrs can cause gear teeth in a system to not run smooth. Burrs in machined components can break off during operation and contaminate the system that they are operating within. Deburring processes can mean several different processes such as abrasively brushing a component or even further machining if the parts are large and the material is hard enough that traditional deburring processes are not time effective.
