Taking Edge Prep Into the Future

As a process analyst, one of my primary jobs is to find new ways to improve the efficiency, reliability, safety, and economy of major manufacturing processes. I travel all over the country to visit different manufacturing plants to help find ways to improve manufacturing systems to maximize profits, minimize waste, increase safety, and ensure an optimal finished product. Because at the end of the day, a manufacturer is only as good as his process, and an end product is only going to be as good as the system that produced it. And that's the bottom line.

The manufacturing industry is a multi-trillion-dollar industry in the United States, and it's an industry that relies heavily on the quality of its tools. A bad tool means a bad end product, no matter how good the process that it's a part of is. That's why one of the biggest recommendations I make to manufacturers all over the country is to make sure that they invest in proper edge prep for their tools. Proper edge prep can benefit any cutting tool, from drill bits to end mills, reamers to taps to gear hobs. Anything that cuts has an edge, and anything that has an edge can benefit from proper edge prep. It's a factor that plays into almost every manufacturing process, and yet it's one that is all-too-often ignored.

When manufacturers ask me what to look for in a good edge prep system, I direct them to Mutschler Edge Technologies (MET). MET has made it their business to design, engineer, develop, and produce top-of-the-line edge prep systems that are capable of addressing almost any need. They know the importance of proper edge prep, and they know what goes into it, and how to make it work for almost any tool. They work one-on-one with their clients to help them find or develop customized edge prep solutions for all their needs, and they service their own machines. They also carry a full line of brush media and other edge prep consumables, and offer knowledgeable advice on which ones are best suited to particular jobs.

As the manufacturing industry grows and changes, facing new challenges in different materials such as complex alloys and alternatives to metals, as well as the needs to machine increasingly complex components, MET is leading the way to the future in edge prep technology. They've shown their edge prep systems to thousands of industry "decision makers" at the International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago, and they're dedicated to staying on the front line of edge prep technology in a dynamic and fast-paced industrial environment.

There are a lot of different ways that a manufacturer can work to optimize their manufacturing processes. One of the most fundamental ones is investing in proper edge prep technology, and one of the best ways to do that is to contact Mutschler Edge Technologies today!

The author of this article is a process analyst who recommends Mutschler Edge Technologies (MET) for cost-effective edge-honing systems and services that enable his clients to apply standard or custom-edge preparations to a wide range of cutting tools. You can contact MET for a solution tailored to your edge-honing needs.

The Many Faces of Deburring: Abrasive Brush Deburring

Recently, I was tasked with re-writing the standard operating procedures for my company, as well as some guidelines, best practices, and written standards for our manufacturing processes. One of the topics I had to cover was our deburring procedures, and in doing a little bit of research on the subject, I was surprised at how many different kinds of deburring solutions there are out there. There are estimated to be around 119 different deburring processes in history, 80 of which are still in industrial use today! That's a lot, right?

This got me to wondering if maybe the deburring solutions that we used weren't the very best ones for our processes, which led me to doing some research on the different kinds of deburring solutions that are available.

One popular deburring solution is abrasive brush deburring. Abrasive brush deburring has a number of advantages, one of the chief ones being that it can be done on-machine, which is a must for many industrial deburring operations. Abrasive brushes can be made of a variety of materials, but nylon brushes are among the most common and most dependable. Nylon abrasive brushes are extremely reliable and versatile, and they can be made-to-order for almost any need.

Nylon abrasive brushes are formed from a nylon carrier that's extruded with an abrasive grain. The type of grain depends on the job that the brush needs to do, but a few of the types that're out there include ceramic, silicon carbide, cubic boron nitride, and even diamond. The brushes themselves can come in a variety of shapes, including radial, disk, bottle, or many others. Even the nylon filaments themselves can come in a variety of shapes—such as rounded, crimped, or rectangular—and can be of varying composition between nylon and grain media. It's these many variables that help make nylon abrasive brushes such a versatile deburring media option. They can be customized to fit almost any deburring solution.

The Cleveland Deburring Machine Company (CDMC) has been pioneering and perfecting various kinds of deburring solutions for years, and abrasive brush deburring has been one of their many successes. They manufacture a couple of standard machines that use abrasive brush deburring, including the OLS Model 2003-GB and the OLS Model Mag 1/C. Both are designed to accommodate specific functions, but can also be adjusted for many different needs. For example, the OLS Model 2003-GB, while designed to be operator loaded, can easily be adapted to accommodate robotic loading and unloading.

At my company, we ended up switching to the OLS Model 2003-GB from our old solution, and it's saved us a bundle already in time and manpower. Every manufacturer has different deburring needs, though, and CDMC is ready to accommodate them all. They recommend that anyone interested in a deburring solution give them a call, and they can help figure out what deburring solution is right for your manufacturing process!

The author of this article has utilized the services of the Cleveland Deburring Machine Company (CDMC) in Cleveland, Ohio. CDMC knows deburring. Contact CDMC for a deburring solution tailored to your needs.