Mechanical deburring and edge-finishing processes for aluminum parts—a review

Burr formation is considered as a detrimental phenomenon that not only decreases the machined part surface and assembly quality, but also increases the production cost. To conduct burr removal from machined edges and holes, the costly and non-desirable secondary operation, so-called deburring, is demanded. The complexity and severity of deburring processes depend on several factors, including burr size, location, and the material to be deburred. Due to vast applications of aluminum alloys in numerous manufacturing sectors including automotive and aerospace industries, adequate knowledge of the most widely used deburring processes on aluminum alloys is demanded. However, surprisingly, despite the acute demands by numerous manufacturing sectors, no state of the art was found in the open literature about applicable deburring and edge-finishing methods for aluminum work parts. This lack is intended to be remedied in this work by providing an insight into the most widely used deburring and edge-finishing processes for aluminum work parts. To that end, several deburring classifications were proposed. The main highly used category of deburring techniques is mechanical deburring process which is related to the removal of various kinds of burr shapes and size by means of mechanical abrasion. In fact, mechanical deburring processes are the most widely used techniques due to versatility, flexibility, deburring rate, and acceptable cost. Among mechanical deburring methods, several methods including robotic, CNC, and manual deburring were presented in this work. A brief insight into the application of several other non-classified mechanical deburring processes was also presented. In addition, knowing that an accurate selection of deburring methods is highly dependent to proper understanding of the burr formation, therefore, an overview of burr formation mechanism, morphology, shape, and, in principle, those factors governing burr formation are also presented, followed by experimental, numerical, and analytical models of burr formation morphology and size. Other general concerns, including the use of lubricant and its effects on deburring performance, must be identified. The future demands of precision deburring are challenging, not only for machine tools and deburring tools, but also for high-precision machining researchers. Close collaborations between machine tool builders, CAD/CAM programmers for precision tool path planning, and deburring and edge-finishing R & D community are highly demanded towards the successful movement to the next generation of precision deburring and edge finishing. © 2017, Springer-Verlag London Ltd.