Strip Brushes
Strip brushes are long, thin brushes used for a variety of conveyor product
cleaning, sealing and surfacing applications in industrial and commercial manufacturing.
Sometimes referred to as channel back brushes, strip brushes are composed of
natural, polymer or metal bristles folded in half and securely clamped by aluminum
or steel channels; various types of brushes are often formed from coiled strip
brushes, such as cylindrical coil brushes (roller brushes), outside disks,
inverted disks and cup brushes. Other types of strip brushes are designed specially
to seal drafty doors, windows, conveyor edges, cleanroom doors and other cracks
and openings which require a flexible, porous seal.
Fill material, bristle length, channel size and length are all customizable
features of strip brushes, and different types of strip brushes are used in
manufacturing and food processing. Straight strip brushes are often used on
conveyor belts for sweep cleaning, product guiding and sorting, as well as
in sealing and guarding applications, such as vehicle spray guards. Coiled
strip brushes, disks and cup brushes are also used frequently in conveyorized
processing for cleaning, surface roughening, dusting, sorting, washing food
products, lint brushing, static dissipation, pipe cleaning, textile felting
and surface finishing; metal-bristled coil and cup brushes are often used at
high speeds for deburring, finishing or polishing. Strip brushes wound into
tight coils are called cylinder brushes, a common cleaning and surface finishing
tool.
Black nylon is the most common fill material used in strip brushes, since
nylon offers superior abrasion resistance, bend recovery and flex fatigue recovery.
Sealing strip brushes and many coiled cylinder brushes are made from various
lengths of black nylon. Polypropylene, polyester and abrasive polymers embedded
with silicone carbide particles are other common types of strip brush bristle
materials; metal is used sometimes for more intense abrasion, and animal hair
is used more rarely for cleaning and polishing. Strip brushes of all kinds,
whether they be sealing strip brushes, metal cup brushes or felting cylinder
brushes, are crucial components of most industrial manufacturing processes,
solving processes which have few or no alternative methods.