Auto Tranny Gear Can’t Beat Automated Brush Deburring


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HI Forging, the largest supplier of forged and forged/machined steel compo- nents in North America, produces wheel-end, transmission, drivetrain, and steering and suspension components for such transportation industry customers as General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, and Harley-Davidson. HHI has the capacity to do high-, mid- and low-volume production at its nine forging loca- tions, two machining plants and the two other production divisions that fall under the umbrella of HHI Group Holdings LLC (Royal Oak, MI), a company with nearly 3000 employees. “We’re 80% automotive. We have some of the higher volume forging capabili- ties, so we have very competitive pricing,” said Christopher Bass, an application engineer who has been with HHI eight years and worked in CNC machining for 35 years. “People do business with us because of the quality of the tooling we build, our quality systems and our capabilities.”


With annual production volume of 500–600 million pieces, HHI needs reli- able processes and equipment to help meet the output and quality demands of its customers. The CNC turning process HHI uses in production generates small burrs—raised edges or pieces of material often as small as two to five-thousandths of an inch thick—inside many of the parts. The process of deburring removes these pieces and smooths out rough edges or ridges. Customers provide specific instruc- tions to HHI on the deburring of their parts. A contract may require no sharp edges larger than a specific size or no burrs at all, for example. HHI Forging


uses an automated deburring pro- cess with ceramic brushes from Wei- ler Corp. (Cresco, PA) for high-vol- ume production of transmission parts in some facilities that has resulted in productivity and quality gains. “We have to get in there and ensure with our process that we remove every burr we generate. You look at the quality, and that’s the critical part,”


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An example of a Weiler brush being used to deburr a transmission component in an automated setup. In recent years, HHI has seen productivity and quality gains by implementing automated deburring processes.


July 2014 | ManufacturingEngineeringMedia.com 139


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