Equipment Cuts Camshaft Deburring Cycle Times

A specialized, dedicated deburring machine that blasts metal burrs off camshafts is only one piece of equipment that Cinetic Automation Corp. (Farmington, Mich.) provides for the automotive industry. As part of the deburring process, not only does the company need a chip coolant conveyor, but a heavy duty magnetic chip coolant separator to continuously eliminate the fines that are removed in the deburring operation. It also needs to have the ability to clean the coolant for recirculation in the process. Otherwise, the coolant can become heavily contaminated with fines that can eventually plug or cause other problems for the coolant system.

Craig Duncan, project engineer with Cinetic, says, “We’ve dealt with Storch Magnetics on conveyors before and have used the company’s chip coolant integrated conveyor separators in the past. We have a history with them, and know they make a reliable product. So we are using their equipment in these camshaft deburring machines.”

For many years, Cinetic has offered equipment designed for part manufacturing problems. The company has developed a long list of equipment and systems for light vehicle manufacturers, heavy trucks, equipment suppliers and integrators.

For Honda’s U.S. auto manufacturing facility, a deburring machine was needed that offered faster cycle times and more flexibility for different types of camshafts. Cinetic developed a unique camshaft burr removing machine for the company that has the flexibility to deburr several different camshafts including ones with different lengths.

Once a design was agreed on between Honda and Cinetic that took into consideration the need for a 45-second cycle time and the ability to deburr more than one type of camshaft, the equipment was built to Honda’s specifications.

With the Cinetic/Centri spray equipment, camshafts are loaded in the machine by a three-axis gantry robot and placed in a chuck that holds the camshaft end to end. A rotating steel brush that runs the length of the camshaft moves in from one side of the camshaft and removes all the burrs from the previous machining operation while the camshaft rotates around its axis.

At the ends of various camshafts are drilled holes for oil lubrication, which are also automatically deburred using a long brush the machine automatically inserts into these holes. For some of these holes to be reached, the camshaft must be moved off its centerline, which the machine does automatically. Software controls the deburring operation’s cycle time and indicates to the deburring machine which camshaft is introduced into the machine for proper deburr motion contour control.

To keep up with engine production, this deburring machine has a part cycle time of 45 seconds, including a 6-second load/unload cycle. Wash system coolant is used to separate the metal fines away from the camshaft. They are flushed down through the machine into a catch tank that funnels the fines towards the rear of the machine into a small opening and to a Storch rare earth, magnetic chip-coolant conveyor that removes the fines before the coolant is finally sent to a settling tank. After the coolant settles, any fines missed in the first separation process are trapped in a filter station. Then the coolant is used again to remove additional fines from camshafts. Various Storch conveyors such as a chip drag or an integrated drag using a magnetic conveyor surface can be used to convey and elevate to a taller hopper, if required.

An important part of this equipment is the ability to continuously eliminate the fines that are removed in the deburring operation, and the ability to clean the coolant for recirculation in the process. Otherwise, the coolant can become heavily contaminated with fines that can eventually plug or cause other problems for the coolant system. The magnetic chip and fines coolant separator provides non-media separation and significantly reduces both disposal and media cartage costs.

Mr. Duncan says if any of the fines get by the Storch magnetic chip coolant separator, they will be filtered through a duplex (twin) filtering bag setup. If one filter were to get dirty, it can be bypassed during the operation to another filtering unit. Also, an alarm on the control panel alerts the operator of the problem. Then the operator can switch over to the secondary filter without having to shut down the machine for cleaning.

While Storch has multiple performance drums available, the company’s standard magnetic chip coolant separator drum provides separation at 98-percent efficiency down to 20 microns and will further separate down to 5 microns at various lower percentages based on the customer’s metal grade being machined, coolant or oil type, coolant velocity into the separator, and the unit’s maximum GPM flow rate.

Each customer’s application is dependent on the ferrous metal material grade and other variables that will affect the percentage efficiency separation performance. In very challenging applications such as machine ground stainless steel blades where the ground fine particulates become slightly magnetic, Storch has manufactured solutions with extreme high energy rare earth neodymium magnetic drums to separate these challenging and often floating semi-ferrous particles out of the customer’s coolants where standard units on the market simply did not perform. 

Regardless of make or brand, a free flowing magnetic chip coolant separator is designed to remove the most significant ferrous and non-ferrous metal particles from coolant while almost eliminating the need for expensive media and paper filters and their related exposal costs. 

For more challenging metal removal, once the Storch drum separator has separated the majority of metal fines through automatic cleaning, an optional enclosed inline micro-mag filter that is manually self cleaning can further separate coolant particles down to 1 micron.  

This Cinetic deburring machine is one of three being used by Honda. Honda is using this new deburring equipment because it allows them to have flexibility for different types of camshafts, more deburring operations and faster cycle times.