A Study of Abrasive Media Effect on Deburring in Barrel Finishing Process

Formation of the burrs in the industrial parts after manufacturing processes such as blanking, punching, machining, cutting and etc. is inevitable. The burring phenomenon decreases the geometrical and dimensional tolerance and makes assembling parts together difficult. Radiusing the corners of workpieces is a common technique to reduce the stress concentrations at corners and also facilitate their assembly. By means of barrel finishing, a number of workpieces undergo deburring and radiusing coincidently in one process. In barrel finishing which is one of the mass finishing techniques, many workpieces with abrasive media are loaded in a rotary barrel. By rotation of the barrel, the parts and abrasive media are collided to each other and rub themselves, resulting in deburring and polishing the workpieces. The working time of this process is normally long. The aim of this study is to decrease the working time by using proper abrasive media. Here, a number of experiments is designed on combination of three abrasive media: steel balls, ceramics and aluminum oxide particles, in different working periods, to achieve appropriate radius and reducing burrs height of CK45 steel alloy samples in reduced working time.