The Challenge

Our customer is a major manufacturer of heavy construction equipment. They needed a solution that would enable them to deburr short runs of large spiral bevel gears and their mating pinions. These parts ranged from 20 to 48 inches in diameter. The old deburring method relied on very experienced employees using hand grinders. While deburring quality was good, production needed to be ramped up and training new personnel correctly was a lengthy process with no assurance that the employee would stay long-term. Quality was hard to measure due to the wide variety of acceptable part parameters.

The Solution: Model 3040-RF Deburring Machine

The condition of the burrs on these parts definitely required the application of a grinding wheel. To automate the solution, our deburring engineers integrated a GE/Fanuc 2001 robot to the deburring machine, then attached the grinding wheel to it. The robot can be programmed with recipes for processing specific parts. Once created and stored in the machine's memory, each recipe is easily and quickly recalled. The gears are rotated on a large chuck for deburring. The heaviest burrs existed at the heel of the spiral (the OD of the part) and were removed by a large flap wheel disc. This deburring process was followed by the robot grinder which applied a uniform dimensional chamfer on the heel profile. The toe area (part ID) had a smaller entry burr which was easily removed by the grinder, after which a dimensional chamfer was applied.

The Result

The predictable and repeatable results delivered by the Model 3040-RF delivered immediate gains in productivity and product quality. Because short-run parts could be processed far more quickly, the customer was able to meet demand with a smaller inventory of spare parts and less work-in-process. In addition, this automated solution has added flexibility to production schedules, enabling even last-minute orders to be met without vulnerability to employee vacations or illness. With most process variables eliminated, production results have become more consistent and quantifiable.