**Small Burrs, Big Problems**

Consider “mission-critical manifolds” in a world that demands high productivity and zero downtime.

Windmills, especially offshore installations, are prime examples of where component failure can be extremely costly. Hydraulic elevator platforms also illustrate critical systems where failure can be life-threatening. These risks extend to various industries and large machinery.

To ensure reliable performance of manifolds and valves, eliminate burrs and particles with thermal deburring (TEM). 

TEM, or Thermal Energy Method, is an effective solution. This article explains how TEM works, its ideal applications, advantages, disadvantages, and how it compares to other deburring techniques.

TEM is suitable for materials like cast iron, steel, stainless steel, zinc, aluminum, brass, and some thermoplastics.

Thermal deburring removes burrs effortlessly with a superheated wave reaching 3,300°C (6,000°F) in milliseconds.

Methane, a common fuel gas with good energy content by volume, is typically used for thermal deburring, supplied either in bottles or via natural gas networks. Hydrogen is also suitable but less common due to higher costs, though it is more environmentally friendly, producing water as the main by-product.

**Advantages of Thermal Deburring:**

1. **Speed:** Burrs, being smaller than the component, reach their auto-ignition point instantly and oxidize in the oxygen-rich chamber without damaging the component.

2. **Integrity:** The burr is vaporized completely, ensuring a reliable deburring process without the need for further inspection. This automation reduces reliance on skilled labor and allows for automatic loading and unloading.

3. **Cost Efficiency:** The process reduces the cost per part.

**Why Burrs Matter:**

Even with careful design and manufacturing, ensuring burr-free parts is challenging. Burrs can compromise part integrity, require additional processing, pose safety hazards, and cause product malfunctions. This leads to increased costs, re-manufacturing, warranty issues, service calls, recalls, and potential damage to the company’s reputation. Thus, removing or securing burrs is essential to prevent them from detaching from the part.

Burrs are characterized by their attachment strength to the workpiece and sharpness, which is critical for Car Lift Repair Orlando safety concerns.

**Impact of Burrs**

Fluid power plays a crucial role in many critical applications today. It is integral to some of the most demanding tasks, such as control, maneuvering, lifting, digging, braking, steering, and adjusting. Concurrently, the need for greater power, faster response times, finer control, and more compact sizes has pushed modern Car Lift Repair Orlando fluid power systems toward higher operating pressures, complex designs, and reduced dimensions.

**How Thermal Deburring Works**

Thermal Deburring, or TEM, is widely used in the fluid power industry and is effective for materials like steel, cast iron, and aluminum. The process can handle large-size manifolds due to its spacious chamber.

The Thermal Energy Method (TEM) leverages the energy produced from gas combustion to oxidize burrs. The technique distinguishes burrs from the main component by their high surface area-to-mass ratio.

In TEM, a pressurized mixture of combustible gas and oxygen is ignited within a sealed, controlled chamber, creating an intense heat blast reaching up to 3,300°C (6,000°F) for a few milliseconds. This high-temperature burst causes burrs and flashings to ignite, burn, and vaporize, while the main workpiece heats minimally, preserving its metallurgical properties.

Car Lift Repair Orlando TEM can deburr components quickly, often in a single cycle, including multiple parts at once as the gas flows around them. The entire process, excluding loading and unloading, typically takes less than a minute, making TEM highly efficient.

The volume of gas injected, burr thickness, heat transfer rate of the material, and the fuel-to-oxygen ratio determine the amount of material removed. The surrounding gases ensure complete removal of burrs and flashings, resulting in a component free of loose particles.

**Car Lift Repair Orlando Valve Bodies:** With numerous intersecting holes, grooves, threads, and hard-to-reach areas, valve bodies are particularly challenging to deburr. TEM is perfect for this task, making assembly easier, allowing smooth spool movements, and ensuring system reliability.

**Manifolds:** Similar to valve bodies, manifolds also benefit greatly from TEM deburring, which addresses their complex structures efficiently.

**Car Lift Repair Orlando Spools:** Spools have precision grooves, intricate holes, and notches that are too delicate for manual deburring. Ineffective deburring can lead to improper functioning or jamming of the system.

**Car Lift Repair Orlando Pump and Hydraulic Motor Elements:** High-pressure pumps and hydraulic motors, which have minimal clearances between moving parts, require effective deburring to prevent failures.

**Cylinder Components:** Cylinder porting blocks and end caps are commonly deburred using TEM.

**Car Lift Repair Orlando Hydraulic Fittings:** Often overlooked, these components can be a significant source of burrs. Dislodged burrs can travel to other critical areas in the circuit, causing serious issues.

**Threads:** Threads are a frequent source of contamination and are typically not deburred. When connectors are fastened, burrs can become dislodged and enter the system, leading to premature wear and failure. TEM effectively clears tiny particles along the thread’s primary diameter.

**Post-Treatment Considerations:** After Thermal Deburring, an oxide layer may remain on the surface. This by-product is removed during a cleaning operation. Leading chemical companies offer post-cleaning products tailored to different materials. These products are used in post-treatment stations, ranging from simple dunking stations to fully automated systems with advanced features like ultrasonic cleaning.

**Benefits of TEM:** Thermal Deburring offers superior and cost-effective deburring. It addresses modern industry challenges such as intricate designs that prevent manual deburring, health requirements limiting repetitive motions, lack of interest in deburring jobs, labor shortages, and high labor costs in certain regions.

**Accessing TEM Technology:** TEM equipment is available from various manufacturers. If your volume doesn’t justify purchasing equipment, you can use contract services to access the technology. TEM machines come in various sizes, often named based on their clamping force and chamber size. Most chambers are round, open at the bottom, and bell-shaped at the top, with varying diameters and heights. Recent trends include larger chambers for accommodating bigger manifolds or long shafts. Some manufacturers offer cubic designs as an alternative. Though TEM machines can be expensive, they have long lifespans, low service costs, and high efficiency, resulting in the lowest cost per part.