Laser Deburring Technology-ShangHai RunQia Electronics Technology Co.,Ltd.

Laser Deburring Technology

The basic principle of laser deburring technology is to take advantage of the laser’s features such as high intensity, high energy density, strong focusing performance and good directivity. The laser beam emitted from the laser device passes through an optical system and is focused into light spots of different diameters to scan the burrs on parts. The burrs are thereby melted and vaporized and finally removed. This technology features high efficiency and a wide range of application.

Burrs refer to irregular metal parts such as sharp corners and rough edges formed at surface transitions of workpieces during metal processing. With social progress and the gradual improvement of industrialization and automation, customers have set increasingly higher requirements on manufacturing precision and product quality, and the service conditions of products have become more stringent. The existence of burrs not only affects the dimensional accuracy of parts, but also impairs the reliability of complete equipment, and may further cause failures of mechanical products. Therefore, deburring has become a critical procedure in part machining.

To solve the problem of burrs, various deburring methods have emerged. Deburring processes have evolved from early manual and mechanical operation toward automation. Common conventional deburring methods include barrel grinding, high-temperature deburring, mechanical brushing deburring, extrusion honing deburring, magnetic abrasive finishing, water jet deburring and others. In recent years, with the rapid development of laser technology and the advantages of laser processing such as non-contact operation and environmental friendliness, laser deburring has been increasingly widely applied.

The existing laser deburring technology still has the following problems: Firstly, the laser inevitably scans the workpiece itself during deburring, causing oxidation of the workpiece edges to varying degrees, which reduces the corrosion resistance and wear resistance of the workpiece surface. In addition, to achieve an optimal deburring effect, the required direction of shielding gas varies with different positions of burrs.

Furthermore, burrs differ in size. Removing large burrs usually requires high power density, namely high laser power with a small spot size. However, when this process is used to remove small burrs, over-burning tends to occur at small burr positions accompanied by a large heat-affected zone. By contrast, removing small burrs often adopts low power density, namely low laser power with a large spot size. When applied to large burrs, insufficient melting occurs, resulting in the formation of secondary burrs.

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