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.