Thermal spray deburring costs

Sponsored Links

Thermal spray coating companies just like other manufacturing companies have to place extreme importance to cost control in their operations in order to compete effectively and to be profitable. One of the areas that is often overlooked in thermal spray coatings processing is the deburring operations involved. Generally thermal spray coatings estimators look at deburring as the last operation prior to inspection and simply put in a blanket costing for this step and do not think much of it. However, there could be some cost control opportunities in the de-burring department of your thermal spray coatings operation.

Cost controls in thermal spray de-burring can be effected by following a more holistic approach. Sounds like a medical healing technique, but seriously one cannot do anything of value if you take de-burring as a stand alone process. A little explanation may make this clear. If de-burring is looked upon as simply pulling thermal spray masking plugs or thermal spray masking tape and taking a couple of files and filing away the over spray and breaking any sharp edges, then the only way to reduce costs would be to lower the de-burring department’s wages to next to nothing so the employees can go home to their families with an empty bowl every day

What needs to happen is thermal spray process engineering needs to get involved and design masking in such a manner that very little de-burring is required in the first place. For example, reduce the amount of thermal spray tape masking to a minimum and invest in shadow masking and hard tooling. Modifications to spray gun angle so that the thermal spray coating feathers as much as possible, so sharp edges and overhangs are minimized. This may also need some parameter tweaking because at certain gun angles the micro structure may not meet the desired specifications and so parameters may have to be altered so the coating meets the specification even at the gun angle required to minimize subsequent de-burring.

Thus, interaction between thermal spray tooling engineers and de-burring technicians needs to be taking place quite frequently, on a part number by part number basis to result in cost savings being instituted in the de-burring area.

Sponsored Links

No comments: