Efficient Removal of Milling Burrs by Abrasive Flow

Various types of burrs are formed during machining, press forming, and laser cutting. Deburring tools with cutting edges as well as wire brushes are widely used for deburring when the burr edges are accessible. When the burr edges are difficult to reach, abrasive flow machining is a good candidate. In this work, the removal of milling burrs is attempted using several types of flow guides. The effects of process parameters, such as the shapes of the flow guides and viscosity of the abrasive fluid, are investigated by conducting orthogonal array experiments. An index representing the suitability of the flow field for deburring is suggested based on the flow velocity and shear stress in the vicinity of the burr edge. The index values obtained for each of the experiments from the CFD simulations seem to match the deburring performances of the flow guides.