ARKU Knowledge Blog

Single or double-sided deburring – what is more useful | ARKU Inc.

Written by Admin | Jan 17, 2021 11:00:00 PM
When laser-cut parts come off the cutting table, they are not necessarily ready for assembly: a deburring machine is necessary to remove the burr caused during laser cutting. Other processes, such as flame or plasma cutting, also leave behind burrs/slag which are an obstacle for efficient downstream processing. Modern deburring machines can deburr and edge round the workpieces while also providing a surface finish if necessary.


If possible, always double-sided!

This is particularly fast with deburring machines that work double-sided. Allowing the parts to be processed from the top and bottom side in just a single pass. Therefore saving more than 50% of the time compared to a single-sided deburring machine. This doesn’t only take into account that parts have to be ran twice, but also in terms of handling the workpieces. The double-sided machine thus saves between 40 and 80 Euros per hour. Indicating that even with just a few hours of usage per week, it can pay off big time. So for economic reasons, the decision is “always double-sided”!

Even if only one side of the sheet metal parts are to be processed, a double-sided deburring machine can still be useful. This may eliminate the need for presorting or flipping the workpieces over. This can be a time-consuming and dangerous task with larger workpieces or heavy flame-cut parts. If – depending on the manufacturing processes – you add investments for additional handling equipment to compensate for a single-sided deburring machine, the expected price advantage can quickly turn into the opposite.


Where is the catch?

But there are also useful applications for single-sided deburring machines. In contrast to double-sided machines, single-sided ones often have a vacuum table as a support. This allows you to securely fix and process even smaller parts that would otherwise “fall through the cracks” if they were to be processed from both sides simultaneously. This makes a single-sided machine interesting for laser job shops for example, since they deal with a large array of different parts.

A supported surface for sheet metal parts by a vacuum table also allows certain rounding processes, for a machine equipped with rotary brushes. The edge rounding process with rotary brushes achieves the best possible rounding results on inner and outer contours, since the brushes make contact with the material from different directions. The processing result is very uniform, regardless of the shape and orientation of the parts. Even a radius of up to 2.0 mm can be achieved with the rotary rounding brushes.

In addition to deburring and edge rounding, machines processing from only one side also allow for a surface finish as a final step. To achieve such, the machines are equipped with a separate unit for surface processing.

"For technical reasons and due to its high flexibility, the single-sided machines fit better with certain laser cutting applications."

Andreas Hellriegel, Business Unit Manager