FOCUS ON SURFACE FINISHING
company are its almost 200 employees .
“ To be able to deliver quality , we only work with skilled workers ,” emphasized Angela Weyer .
The need for deburring
TMS ’ s customers , especially in the medical technology sector , have called for more and more deburred sheets . In this area , quality requirements are always changing .
“ There are two reasons for this ,” explained plant manager , Johannes Hemmer . One reason was handling , because employees can injure themselves on metal sheets that are not deburred and have sharp edges . Secondly , the medical equipment is regularly disinfected and the cleaning cloths can lose fibres on the remaining burrs . These fibres then become a breeding ground for germs .
TMS previously used an old wet deburring machine for deburring . This could only meet its requirements to a limited extent and left water spots on the workpieces . Therefore , in 2020 , the managers decided to look for a new machine . When they had almost finished sifting through available offerings , they came across the EdgeBreaker ® 6000 .
“ ARKU Maschinenbau designed this system specifically for complete processing after punching and laser cutting ,” explained Stefan Sauter from ARKU ’ s sales team . “ In just one pass , the machine can deburr , round edges and apply a surface finish ,” he continued .
The core of this deburring machine is a rotor equipped with rotary brushes . The sheet edges are therefore rounded more evenly because the brushes always hit the sheet metal from different directions .
“ This means that they remove the material very evenly , both on the inner and outer contours of the workpiece ; even radii of up to 2.0mm are possible ,” reported Sauter . “ The rotor with the brushes is supplemented by
TMS plant manager , Johannes Hemmer ( left ), and his production employees Michael Lorig and Justin Gruber ( centre ) discuss the processing results with Stefan Sauter , ARKU sales ( right ). a sanding belt for deburring and an optional fleece for surface finishing .”
As soon as the EdgeBreaker ® 6000 was available , things moved quickly at TMS . “ The sample part results were satisfactory and the contact was also very good ,” Hemmer confirmed . “ We ordered the machine in March 2021 and configured it to our own requirements .” At the beginning of September 2021 , the system was delivered on time and integrated into TMS ’ s production .
“ The EdgeBreaker ® is now much more central than the old deburring machine . It is directly in the material flow immediately after cutting and highlights how deburring is becoming more central ,” said the plant manager . “ The surface finish is less relevant for us , so we left out the third unit . This has
Examples of sheet-metal parts at TMS .
With rotary brushes on a rotor for edge rounding , the EdgeBreaker ® 6000 rounds sheet edges in a particularly uniform fashion . saved us money and we still have a fullyfledged machine that can do its job ,” Hemmer continued .
Diverse part handling
A wide range of parts can be processed by the deburring machine while other areas of TMS ’ s production benefit from the machine ’ s edge-rounding capabilities . The range of parts handled is correspondingly diverse .
In upstream cutting , TMS has two flatbed lasers , a punching / laser machine combo , two punching machines and a waterjet cutting system .
“ We can deburr the parts with the EdgeBreaker ® and then bend and weld them . In some cases , they also go directly to coating after deburring ,” explained Hemmer .
Since the workpieces at TMS have their own special features , handling them on the deburring machine requires expertise and experience . Some of the sheet formats are quite large , up to 1m x 2m . At the same time , there are also thin stainless-steel sheets with a thickness of 0.6-1mm .
“ The EdgeBreaker ® 6000 can also be used to reliably process sensitive sheet metal that is only 0.6mm thick ,” commented TMS .
To confirm this , TMS had corresponding sample parts processed at ARKU in advance and were happy with the results .
“ Unless the 0.6mm metal sheets exhibit any unusual curvatures , they are processed correctly ,” added Hemmer .
Easy operation and maintenance
The maximum sheet width that can be processed by the company on the new machine has also increased from 980 to 1300mm .
“ Wet deburring is problematic for normal steel parts because of rust . We therefore only used to process stainless steel and aluminium on the old system ,” outlined Hemmer . However , operation on the new ARKU machine
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