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Robotic deburring of metal parts
Frequently, deburring is a mandatory step in the production cycle of a metal part.
This process removes burrs formed during machining, injection or molding for reasons of safety, esthetics, or as required for the next manufacturing process. It also creates chamfers or rounded edges that improve the fatigue strength of certain parts.
In many industries, this process is still often performed manually as deburring quality depends on the operator’s skill and dexterity. It is, though, a particularly arduous task, that exposes operators to dust and requires the use of several different tools or abrasives.
GEBE2 deploys robotic solutions that reproduce an operator’s gestures and meticulousness using abrasives or cutting tools. Combined with a compliant device or using the natural compliance of the abrasives, the robot embeds rotary and linear effectors that attain execution speeds or forces that would be impossible to apply manually.
To enhance the autonomy and performance of their cells, GEBE2 has equipped its robots with systems that change effectors, sanding or cutting tools automatically.
The quality of robotic deburring, chamfering or edge-rounding is strongly related to the regularity of the tool’s motion on the part. This is ensured by our offline programming software (OLP), which creates and simulates all possible tool trajectories.
Optical measurements are used to locate areas where rough zones (forging, molding, etc.) and machined zones intersect in order to deburr or round off edges whose position cannot be repeated from one part to the next. This system can also be used to recognize parts or to check post-operation chamfer or edge-rounding performance.
Each workshop is tailor-made to suit the specific requirements of the manufacturing process. GEBE2 develops customized solutions that automate tool changes during the cycle, offering great flexibility for varied production and frequent format changes.
For customers in the aeronautics industry, GEBE2 has developed a range of abrasive and cutting tool workshop, including horizontal abrasive workshop, vertical tool workshop and rotary tool workshop for greater capacity. Each is developed for a specific process, with specialized finishing tools.
The application is designed to remove the burrs that make parts dangerous to handle, and also to round off sharp edges. This result is achieved by selecting and using abrasives that are applied with a motor spindle that sweeps across all the profiles. The tool trajectory strategy combined with the abrasive’s natural compliance gives the expected result in terms of dimensions, regularity of shape and cycle time.
The deburring of irregular areas is often a tedious operation that generates non-quality. The purpose is to remove machining burrs while creating a chamfer without altering useful surface areas.
The objective is to optimise and control the uniformity of the roughness of a machined surface. The brushing operation, by adapting the consumables, can be used on many metallic materials. The cell also deburrs the contour of the machined area.
Abrasive deburring is used on metal or composite parts where the requirement is to turn the sharp edge into a radius or a simple corner break.
The cutting tool deburring process is used on metal or composite parts when the requirement is to transform the sharp edge into a chamfer with controlled geometry and tolerances.
Our composite and metal finishing solutions: Composite and metal sanding – Acoustic drilling – Composite and metal machining – Trimming – Grinding
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