Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability

The past years have seen emphasis on increasing the quality of machined workpieces while at the same time reducing the cost per piece. Accompanying this is the decreasing size and increasing complexity of workpieces. This has put continual pressure on improvements in the machining process in terms of new processes, new tooling and tool materials, and new machine tools. This often falls under the terminology of High Performance Cutting (HPC) — the theme of this conference. A recent CIRP keynote /1/ outlined and explained some of these drivers for enhancement in machining technology. Fundamental to this continual improvement is understanding edge finishing of machined components, specially burrs. Deburring, like inspection, is a non-productive operation and, as such, should be eliminated or minimized to the greatest extent possible. nderstanding of the fundamentals of burr formation leads us to procedures for preventing or, at least, minimizing, burr formation. This depends on analytical models of burr formation, studies of tool/workpiece interaction for understanding the creation of burrs and, specially, the material influence, data bases describing cutting conditions for optimal edge quality, and design rules for burr prevention as well as standard terminology for describing edge features and burrs. Ultimately, engineering software tools must be available so that design and manufacturing engineers can use this knowledge interactively in their tasks to yield a mechanical part whose design and production is optimized for burr prevention along with the other critical specifications. This paper reviews recent work done in all these areas with an emphasis on research at the University of California at Berkeley.