VIDEO: TOOLING UP – Why You Should Incorporate Deburring Into Your Machining Process

Narrator: Welcome to Tooling Up, a series by MSC Industrial Supply Company that provides real-world insights brought to you by leading industry experts and aimed at improving the efficiency and productivity of your operations.

Eddie: Hey everybody, this is Eddie with MSC and welcome to this episode of MSC's Tooling Up featuring Osborn. On today's episode, we're going to be doing a deep dive into deburring and here to tell us everything that we need to know we brought a specialist from the team at Osborn and our good friend Chris. Let's bring him on in.

Hey Chris, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of MSC's Tooling Up. Before we get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do for the team at Osborn?

Chris: Thank you Eddie. My name is Chris Lyons and I am a field specialist for Osborn covering the southwest and the southeast region. I've been with Osborn for 16 years and my focus is on our ATB line of products, ATB standing for advanced technology brushing, and that is a product line that is created around implementing brushing right inside the customer's machine.

Eddie: Well very interesting and thank you so much for joining us on today's episode. So now that you're here, let's get things started. As we know when it comes to our deburring applications, there is a right and a wrong way to do things. So for you, what are some current outdated or inefficient practices that you're seeing in the field?

Chris: Well unfortunately, what I see a lot of is a lot of hand deburring on benches right? That could be an operator who is deburring by hand right in its cell or it could be a dedicated person or a number of people in some area and that's all they're doing is deburring parts by hand. And that can literally be by hand and when I say that you know they've got a non-woven pad and they're putting finish on a part or they're trying to break an edge, and it can be other things like carbide burs, wire brushes, coated abrasives that are being used on a grinder or something like that but it's very inefficient and time consuming.

Eddie: Well Chris, knowing that these are outdated and mostly inefficient why are some individuals still doing it this way?

Chris: Well that's a question that I have to ask those people a lot when I meet with them in person, but typically what I find is you know deburring unfortunately is usually an afterthought for the manufacturer right? Put a lot of planning into the programming and the design of the part but the deburring is just something that's a necessary evil that happens at the end. If they would incorporate that, think a little bit more about it, put it on the front side, it would make their job a lot easier but they don't. So one of the reasons also is people say that you know they've tried a brush before they might have ordered it online, got it in and ran it and it just didn't work the way they expected it to and typically that's just because there are you know some technicalities about brushing that if they didn't know what they were doing you know they wouldn't get that result.

And also you know surprisingly a lot of people aren't really aware that these type of brushes exist so they can incorporate them right into their machining center. Recently I’m with a customer that's experiencing a lot of bottleneck in production because they're doing these parts by hand, they're having to pull people from other departments just to do deburring so that's about as inefficient as you can get but again you know having looked at their situation we've got a brush in there that we're testing now and it's looking very good and it's going to save them a lot of time and money.

Eddie: Very good. Well when it comes to manual deburring, what are some general consequences individuals are seeing?

Chris: Well aside from the time that's lost doing that right, you've also got real things like you know repetitive action injuries, that's a real concern for people. But probably paramount is the amount of inconsistency from part to part. One person on the first shift might deburr slightly different than the person on second shift that sort of thing, using a different tool to do so. Another thing also is rework because sometimes they may not deburr it efficiently or to the extent it needs to be and it's reworked you know so that's costly. And then probably the most costly would be a scrap situation where somebody got a little aggressive on the deburr with a part. I go back years ago and somebody told me when I was in an aircraft manufacturer they said we have to eliminate this bench deburring because it's crazy the idea that we take a big large piece of titanium, machine it for about 15 to 16 hours, we've got a part now that's worth $20,000, $25,000 and we hand it off to the lowest paid guy in the shop to debur that. It just doesn't make sense and that doesn't make sense so that would probably be you know a worst case scenario.

Eddie: Completely understandable. And so when it comes to our deburring process Chris, how can we optimize it?

Chris: Well our goal is to take an offline deburring process and put it inline, right into the customer's machine center. Turn it from like I said not have it be a downstream function that's just a time eater right? So, we incorporate the brush into the program using their existing machinery whether it's a CNC or robotic cell, etc. and by doing that you know we're going to give consistency every time to that finished product and we're going to speed up the process too. The brush deburring is much faster than the manual operation and again probably the most important part of that is the consistency from part to part.

Eddie: This all sounds intriguing Chris but tell me this, how is this helping operators?

Chris: Well you can ask any operator who is deburring or any person that is doing the deburring they don't like it. It's not, again I can go back to where you know it was described to me as an entry-level job. It really is a nasty task so if we deburr right in the machine that's allowing the operator number one to be rid of that task, number two it frees him up to you know possibly do something else, create more value for the company.

Eddie: Well this is truly intriguing and when it comes to the type of versatility we have, what are we looking at in the wide range of materials?

Chris: Well we can deburr or edge break or finish a wide variety of materials. That would be stainless steel, steel, Inconel, titanium, aluminum, plastics, really and I would even say wood. We've had wood applications before but so we're able to achieve results on all those materials because our line of products is so versatile also. Now in front of you you've got some products. They’re a good selection of different filament sizes, different grits, different materials. You've got some ceramic grain, you've got some aluminum oxide and some silicone carbide there. So typically we can achieve the results that we're looking for through some combination of you know whether it's this, whether it's a radial brush like you've got there. We're going to hit an edge with that or if we're doing a flat or semi-flat surface, we'd come at it with one of those discs that you have and of course you've got an internal brush there that's great for cross-hole deburring.

Eddie: So Chris tell me this. How important is it to automate this process?

Chris: Well when we incorporate brushing into the customer's machine and displace that manual operation, they can expect to get like I said earlier consistent results time after time right. They're not going to have all that rework or that scrap or just inconsistent looking parts. They can you know rely on the fact that once we get that brush process dialed in, that number 500 part coming off that machine is going to look exactly like the first one did and that's really important not only to the customer but to the customer's customer.

Additionally, the significance in savings it really stands out to me and I've been a part of some large savings. I just recently had two opportunities where we documented cost savings in six figures over the last two years with two different accounts and it's not unusual when we move somebody from manual deburring to automated deburring, we sometimes see up to 60 percent in documented overall cost savings. You know that could be the cost of the brush versus the cost of the other consumables they were using, the life of the brush, also increased output you know no bottlenecks, less rework, less scrap, all of those things combined really the savings just really add up.

Eddie: No this is nothing short of impressive and with the various applications in the field, how does Osborn properly support the end users?

Chris: Well you know there are very similar operations right, so when we walk into a place we've seen it before to some extent but generally speaking, most situations are unique in that you know maybe it's the part geometry, the material of the part, what the customer’s expected finish is going to look like in the end. So it's very important for us if in order for us to automate their process it's best that we're at the spindle with them right working right there getting a firsthand look at what it is they're trying to achieve and how we can help them out. And when we're on site you know we typically will have samples with us and we're going to work with the machine operator to really play around with the parameters and dial it in to where that brush is going to provide the ultimate solution to them. And we have field groups all across the country and in the United States, Canada and the United States. Excuse me, we also have specialists like myself if there are larger opportunities or applications or require a little bit more experience and a lot of times we end up providing customers with a special solution and we have engineers obviously on staff to design those sort of brushes.

Eddie: You know this sounds wonderful and thank you for giving us a deep dive in that specific level of support. So as we close out today's episode Chris, you have guided us through so much information would you mind giving us a quick recap?

Chris: Well just generally speaking, the ATB abrasive nylon products are designed to specifically allow your customers to improve efficiency, increase their output and by moving from hand debur operation to an automated brush solution with the current equipment that they have, you know there's no additional equipment that they're going to have to buy to use our brushes. Depending on the customer's requirements and their capabilities it's likely we have a brush solution for them.

Eddie: Wonderful. Well thanks again so much for that and for those who are looking for more information on not only the things that we covered today but also all the other amazing things that Osborn is doing in the market, where can we get more info.?

Chris: Well for more information then go to mscdirect.com\osborn.

Eddie: Wonderful. Again, thank you so much for your time and joining us on this episode of MSC's Tooling Up featuring Osborn.

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