Deburring Centre has commissioned a number of simple to use calculators to illustrate that sub contracting deburring can be cost effective.

Martin Bridges, Deburring Centre's Marketing Manager, explained 'This idea is based upon an Excel spreadsheet. It was commissioned to address the concerns that companies have to contracting out; like batch sizes, transport, economics, extra paperwork etc. Engineering companies always raise serious concerns but are rarely able to quantify them. I'm always using spreadsheets to work out break even and profitable scenarios, and this was seen to be a way of empowering clients to answer their own questions.'

Three scenarios were focused upon. In-house hand deburring v sub-contract, automated, machine deburring; the cost of rework v dedicated machines getting it right first time, and the old chestnut of 'free' deburring in cycle.

The first calculator focuses on a typical component with cross holes and awkward to reach burrs. By entering your hourly costs, time taken, in-house, to deburr a single component, and batch quantity you can quickly see when farming out deburring to dedicated specialists becomes cost effective.

The ideas of sub-contract and deburring are not common bed fellows. However, when the deburring bench is often the bottle neck after new and faster multi-axis machines have been installed, the usual scenario is to employ more labour. This labour isn't always readily available as it usually needs to be highly skilled yet low paid. The other scenario is automated machines. The ubiquitous rumbler, whilst excellent at taking off external rough edges, fails miserably on any awkward to reach, or internal, burrs, and whilst a line of differing deburring equipment in-house is needed, it is a non-starter for the varied workload of most machine shops.

Sub-contracting to specialists is becoming a growing trend. It can be cost effective when you use the right dedicated machine for the job. 'Many people have commented they have been hooked on the calculator,' explained Mr Bridges 'Once they've entered a set of figures, they are keen to recalculate the break even point and then the effects of bigger batch sizes and/or sending multiple batches. Both gaining even more savings by amortising the set up and/or transport costs.'

The first calculator 'Sub-Con Calculator' is available free by sending an email to martin.bridges@deburr.co.uk

 The other two calculators will be available soon.

http://www.deburr.co.uk