This article covers all the information you need to know about wire brushes.
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A wire brush is an abrasive tool with stiff filaments made from various rigid materials designed to clean and prepare metal surfaces. The filaments of wire brushes are thin pieces of inflexible material that are closely spaced together to clean surfaces that require aggressive and abrasive tools. The means of applying the brush can be either manual or mechanical, depending on the type of brush and the surface to be treated.
Though part of a wire brush’s function is to clean surfaces, they have other purposes, such as preparing materials for painting or removing slag and spatter after welding. Wire brushes have become essential to several production operations to prepare products for processing, finishing, and treatment.
The types of wire brushes are endless since new types are continually being developed, as well as different brushes and unusual designs that are required for specialized applications. It is important to understand the necessity and use of wire brushes since they are valuable tools in homes, factories, manufacturing, and process production.
On the surface, wire brushes seem to have a simple design where some form of filament is attached to a handle. Though that initial concept is true, the methods and techniques used to put the handles and filaments together require planning and engineering expertise.
In the engineering of brushes, there are many different types of handles and a wide range of filaments, though metal filaments are the most common type. The brush design depends on how it will be used, with different ones for stripping wallpaper or descaling and deburring parts.
Scratch brushes are general-purpose brushes used for paint, rust, and dirt removal. Handles can be made of plastic or wood with fill options of steel, stainless steel, brass, or bronze filaments.
The purpose of a channel scratch brush is to clean threads and remove light rust or paint. They come in various lengths, with the most common filaments ranging from seven to twelve inches. The handle can be bent or straight, depending on the application. Much like other scratch brushes, the choice of filaments includes steel, stainless steel, brass, or bronze. Channel brushes are available in a variety of wire diameter sizes.
Brushes for welding have to be highly durable due to the nature of the application. This brush is used to prepare a surface for welding by removing oils, dirt, dust, and other materials that may contaminate the process. Once welding is completed, welding brushes are used to remove excess slag or minor burrs. The metal filaments must be resilient enough to withstand the heat from the joined metal pieces.
The toothbrush style wire brush comes in various configurations and a selection of different handles. Regardless of its size, it supplies the same abrasive action as larger brushes and is good for getting into hard-to-reach or small spaces. Its most common use is in the electronics industry. Filaments can be steel, stainless steel, or brass.
The common utility brush comes with a standard face of two by three inches and an overall length of eight inches. This type of brush can be found in many places, from homes for cleaning the BBQ grill to cleaning and preparing parts for production. The most common type of utility brush has a wooden handle with a slightly angled head.
Some floors require a wire head push broom for cleaning accumulated sticky, thick, and viscous substances that cannot be removed with a traditional push broom. A flat wire broom has flat steel wire filaments that are capable of supplying the abrasive force to remove sticky, dense materials from a work area. They are used exactly like a normal push broom but with greater abrasive force.
Much like all forms of brushes, cup wire brushes come in a wide range of styles and types. In some cases, they are specially designed to fit a specific production or finishing application. Cup brushes are used for surface preparation, polishing, and descaling. They have high-density crimped wire filaments.
The name for wire cup brushes comes from their design, which includes a cup-shaped base with wire filaments of brass, steel, or stainless steel inserted. The filaments can be crimped, knotted, rectangular, or twisted.
Wheel wire brushes are used with grinders, robotic finishing devices, or mounting to an arbor. The wires for a wheel brush can be crimped or knotted and made from steel, stainless steel, or brass. The traditional wheel wire brush has an arbor hole of two inches and comes with a variety of wire diameters. Common wire filament lengths for wheel wire brushes are six to eight inches.
Wheel brushes provide straight-line cleaning for surface finishing, cleaning, polishing, deburring, and paint removal. Manufacturers provide a wide selection of wheel brushes that can be used individually or gang-mounted.
Twisted wire brushes are known by several different names depending on the manufacturer or customer. The names include tube, bottle, pipe, spiral, or internal cleaning brushes. They are adaptable enough to be used for manual or power tools such as drills and CNC machining equipment. Twisted brushes are made by putting filaments between stem wires and twisting the stem wires to securely hold the filaments.
Twisted wire brushes are made in many sizes, including ones referred to as miniature or micro brushes. These small brushes are designed to deburr and clean close-tolerance holes drilled in metallic and non-metallic parts.
The main feature of a cylinder wire brush is its wide face, which can clean a large area of a product substrate. They are known as rotary, coil, or spiral brushes, and they consist of a strip brush mounted on a cylindrical core or filament tufts set in a core. The length of the filaments determines how aggressively the brush will clean a surface, with shorter filaments being the most aggressive. Though longer filaments serve the same function, they tend to be gentler and not as abrasive.
End wire or wire end brushes are used in conditions of restricted or limited space and are sometimes referred to as stem brushes. They are ideal for polishing molds, cleaning castings, deburring holes, flash removal, spot-facing, and preparing a metal surface for welding. End brushes tend to look similar to cup brushes. The container for their filaments can come in a range of diameters, from less than an inch up to four inches. A critical aspect of an end brush is its style of filaments, which can be crimped, twisted, flared, or have a hollow center. The filaments are the standard types of steel, stainless steel, brass, or bronze.
Strip brushes, known as channel brushes or metal channel strip brushes, are linear brushes that have a center wire, a metal channel, and metal brush filaments of varying types. They can be as short as one inch or as long as several feet, with filaments that can be less than a half inch or filaments over eight inches.
A metal channel strip brush has metal filaments that are held in place by a U-shaped metal channel and center wire. The channel is formed from flat sheet metal bent into the shape of a “U.” The filaments are also folded into a U shape with a center wire at the bottom of the fold. The folded filaments with their center wire are inserted into the metal channel before the channel is squeezed tightly shut, so the filaments and center wire are securely held in place.
Many different types of wire brushes are made in different ways. The varieties of filaments, handles, cups, channels, and other aspects of wire brush manufacturing are widely varied and depend on the type of brush.
All brushes, regardless of type, have two shared characteristics, which are some form of a container or handle and filaments. The automated and complex production processes for brushes have been designed to create high-quality wire brushes with filaments that are firmly held in place, ensuring the brush’s excellent performance.
The main part of a wire brush is its filaments. The types, diameters, densities, and lengths of these wire filaments determine what applications a brush can be used for. The filament diameter is the measurement across the diameter of an individual filament, which is measured with a micrometer or caliper and can range from 0.003 to 0.050 of an inch.
Finer-diameter filaments offer more cutting tips per square inch than larger-diameter ones. Though larger diameters may seem to be ideal, they tend to fatigue more rapidly and shorten a brush’s usage.
There are several types of wire filaments available for the manufacture of wire brushes. Filaments are chosen according to the types of results they are designed to achieve on the surface being treated.
Crimped steel is ideal for light surface treatments, deburring, and flexible brushing. Twisted or knotted steel is used for heavier applications and hard-to-work surfaces.
The main benefit of steel wire is that it offers a quicker, faster, more aggressive cut and has a longer usage life. These factors result from its durability and ability to endure extreme brushing applications.
The applications that can use coated tin brushes are limited. Coated tin filaments can be straight or crimped for deburring or decarbonizing.
Brass filaments are used on surfaces when there is material to be removed but a need not to harm the substrate. Since brass does not produce sparks, it can be used in potentially flammable environments as a safe alternative to steel.
The grades of stainless steel filaments include grades 302, 304, and 316. Like most stainless steel, grade 302 is corrosion and rust-resistant. It is ideal for food processing, high-temperature applications, and humid conditions. Grade 304 stainless steel does not have the same corrosion and rust resistance as other grades and is used in low moisture or low humidity conditions. Grade 316 has exceptional resistance to corrosion and is normally used in high humidity and saltwater applications.
Nickel silver is produced by alloying 10% nickel, 65% copper, and 25% zinc. The addition of nickel to copper and zinc creates nickel silver. The presence of nickel increases the tensile strength and corrosion resistance of brass, which produces a more versatile filament material.
There are four basic styles of filaments, which are twisted, crimped, level or straight, and rectangular.
Unlike standard brushes that have handles, wire brush filaments are encapsulated in a variety of holders that are designed to keep the filaments compact and secure. The types of holders include the traditional handle, cups, wires, and metal strips. A variety of methods are used to ensure that the filaments are securely placed.
Wire cup brushes are abrasive brushes made by attaching any type of filament to a cup-shaped base. Cups can have either crimped or twisted filaments. Twisted filaments are twisted in groups before being placed in the cup, making them usable for aggressive applications, while crimped filaments are crimped to keep them separated.
The handles for wire brushes are much like the handles for standard household brushes and are made of plastic, wood, metal, or wire. The manufacture of wire brushes with handles includes drilling holes in the handle. There are a variety of ways the filaments are attached, which can include twisting, compression, forcible insertion, or pressurization. In the case of plastic handles, filaments may be inserted in the handle during formation to form a more secure fit.
Handles for twisted wire brushes are unlike the methods used to insert filaments in solid handles. For twisted wire brushes, the filaments are placed between two wires that are twisted to hold the filaments in place. The handle of the brush is an extension of the twisted wires.
The various names of cylinder brushes include rotary and coil brushes. Cylinder brushes can be produced by back strip or stapled set construction. There are several types of cylinder brushes that are differentiated by the type, density, and length of the filaments.
Wheel brushes, or spiral brushes, are a circular shape with either a solid center or an open center. The filaments for the brush are attached to the circumference of the circle. They are normally secured by pressure applied to the sides of the metal holding core, ensuring a secure, tight fit. Wheel brushes with a solid center may have a shaft attached to allow them to connect to a power tool. Brushes with an open center are designed to be slipped onto a grinder. The filaments can be long or short, with shorter filaments applying more aggressive, abrasive force.
A strip brush is a long piece of metal with filaments attached. During manufacturing, a sheet of metal that is four to six inches wide is bent to form a channel. The filaments are placed in the channel, which is crimped to hold the filaments in place. The size, depth, and width of the channel depend on the filament diameter and the trim of the brush.
Wire brushes have found a place in many industries as a means of aggressively cleaning stubborn, thick, metallic surfaces and floors. The variations in wire brushes are defined by their use; some are used to prepare and finish a product, while others are used to tear into hard surfaces. Depending on how fine the wires are, a wire brush can be used to smooth and finely prepare a surface or remove unwanted surface materials on the substrate.
Though wire brushes are normally defined as aggressive tools that can tear into thick materials, they have found use in industries that need a sensitive but aggressive touch, such as electronics welding. There are any number of uses for wire brushes, and new ones are continually being discovered.
One major feature of wire brushes is their abrasive texture. Though this is not true of all wire brushes, since some are used for finishing and cleaning, a particular group is designed exclusively for abrading and removing paint, rust, particulate matter, and metal filings from (mostly) metal substrate. This type of brush cuts into the surface, removing everything it touches. In most cases, once the abrading is complete, a gentler wire brush is used to smooth the surface.
Abrading or abrasive brushes that make deep cuts into a metal surface are used to prepare the surface for applying a coating that will smooth out the remainder. An abrading brush used in this manner is actually preparing the surface for further finishing.
Most abrading brushes are manufactured to be used electronically. There are versions with wood or plastic handles that are used to remove wallpaper, paint, and rust by hand. This type does not cut as deep as the electric version, but it has to be used carefully on drywall and wood.
Acid brushes are small brushes used to apply glue, liquid, or chemicals that are ideal for quickly cleaning small areas. Most acid brushes have crimped filaments of stainless steel but can come with any number of different filament materials.
Pipe brushes are a tool used by plumbers to clean pipes and hard-to-reach surfaces. The diameters of the brushes are equal to or greater than the diameter of the pipe, so they firmly fit against the pipe’s inner surface. Though they are ideal for cleaning pipes, they can also be used to push or destroy obstructions in pipes. The flexible wire version bends with the curves in pipes and can conform to the shape of a pipe.
A common use for cup and wheel wire brushes is for rust removal. Powered wheel wire brushes are ideal for removing rust from hard-to-reach places. They have enough abrasive force to dig into cracks and tight spaces. The wide variety of cup brushes can be used to clean flaky rust and paint from large surfaces. The different sizes and diameters of cup brushes, as well as the hollow versions, offer sufficient alternatives to meet any type of rust removal needs.
When cleaning a stainless steel surface, it is best to use a brass filament cup or wheel wire brush to protect the surface from contamination. Brass filaments have the same cutting abilities but are not as abrasive as steel.
Hand wire brushes can also be used for cleaning rust but are not ideal for large or encrusted surfaces since they do not have the same cutting power and take far too much effort to complete the job. Powered cup and wheel wire brushes can be used for a wide variety of surfaces, from rust on machines and cars to rust-covered fences and barriers.
Though much of the emphasis on wire brushes is on cleaning and removal, they are also ideal for preparing surfaces for finishing. A surface cleaned with a wire brush is ready for the further application of surface protection. In large operations, a form of blasting may be used to clean and prepare a surface. However, regardless of the efficiency of blasting, certain areas may need extra attention to ensure that the surface is completely ready to be finished. In those cases, a handheld cup or wheel wire brush is used to do the necessary detailing.
In surface preparation processes, some amount of roughness is necessary to ensure that the protective material to be applied will adhere. The type of wire brush that is used for the preparation of a surface depends on the type of substrate. The selection of the correct kind of wire brush depends on the types of filaments.
The process of distressing wood is used to wear off the softer, lighter portions of wood grain while leaving the denser parts, producing an aged appearance. What results is a time-worn effect, as if the wood has been weathered outdoors. The process can be completed using a handheld wire brush, which creates a softer, sanded appearance.
Roughing caused by wire brushes will vary according to the types of filaments used. To sand the surface, a wire brush with aluminum filaments of different grits can be used. These types of wire brushes produce the same results as sandpaper.
There are many reasons to use the deburring process, which include holes cut in metal, cutoff operations, or molded parts. Wire brushes are a very practical and economical way to deburr and clean up metal pieces. Wire brushes are less expensive and last longer than chamfering equipment.
There are few limitations on the use of wire brushes for deburring operations. Thin-walled tubing can be deburred using a wire brush without changing the dimensions of the tube. Unlike other deburring methods, wire brush deburring does not leave any types of microburrs on treated surfaces.
An ongoing problem in production is the creation of static during assembly operations. Though the static may not be harmful to workers, it does attract dust, dirt, and other substances to final products that are difficult and time-consuming to remove.
Wire brushes can be incorporated into assembly operations to pick up static and prevent it from being created. Wire brushes pick up static and ground it to extinguish its effects. A wide variety of wire brushes in various lengths and filament diameters can be adapted for this process.
There are several uses for wire brushes in welding applications. Prior to welding, metal surfaces may require pre-welding preparation, which is the removal of impurities on the surface, such as oil, dirt, and grime. Included in removal are rust, corrosion, and coatings that could interfere with the bond of the metals or be volatile.
Once the welding process is completed, the welded surface has to be smoothed, oxidized, and freed of irregularities and foreign particles, much like during pre-welding. Though grinding is used to remove roughness and weld spatter, wire brushes help to smooth and even surfaces.
Four possible wire brushes can be used to prepare and smooth welding surfaces. Wire wheel brushes are versatile and durable enough to do all three of the required operations, while cup wire brushes are ideal for larger surfaces and less detailed work. End wire brushes are used for hard-to-reach spots such as T-joints, using fine, crimped wires for lighter surface cleaning. When less aggressive measures are necessary for small jobs, handheld wire brushes can be used to knock off slag between welding operations.
A major factor in crematoriums is keeping the surface of the oven clean to ensure its continued usefulness. Brass wire brushes are used to clean out the oven chamber without causing damage to the surface. The less abrasive nature of brass makes them the perfect solution for preserving the chamber's integrity. Straight brushes for this purpose can easily connect to threaded handles and come in various widths, with twelve inches being the most common.
Wire rotary brushes are used to remove grime, oil, set-in dirt, and thick, dried substances that have built up on concrete surfaces. Though hand wire brushes attached to mop handles are capable of doing the work, in most instances, it is necessary to attach a large rotary brush to a floor scrubber to get the best results.
Made of heavy gauge steel, rotary wire brushes strip concrete surfaces, removing any type of built-up material that results from shipping or industrial operations. The action of a rotary wire brush is very similar to using a stringent cleaning solvent without the concern for toxicity.
Highly aggressive floor brushes can be used for scraping, scrubbing, scouring, and stripping floors. They are designed to attack impacted soil, grease, and oil. Floor scrubbing brushes come in several diameters, beginning with 13” and going up to over 20”.
With the many types of wire brushes, it can be difficult to determine the correct wire brush for an application. There are certain factors that have to be considered when making the choice since an incorrect choice can lead to problems or damage to a surface.
Though wire brushes are an aggressive tool, there are varying levels to their abrasive force, which is a principal factor when making purchasing decisions. Whether a wire brush is cup, straight, wheel, or handle, it can be soft and smooth or harsh and destructive as required.
One of the factors that differentiates wire brushes is the wire type, which starts with stiff aluminum and runs up to high tensile strength steel. The wire type should complement the work. The chart below is a brief method for matching the proper wire type with the material to be treated.
Aside from the wire type, it is important to determine the wire configuration, which can be twisted, knotted, crimped, or straight. Twisted and knotted wire produce high impact and cover a wide surface area. These types of configurations are normally used in cup and end wire brushes. Twisted and knotted wires are used for heavy-duty applications such as welding, clean-up, and heavy corrosion removal.
Straight wire is not as aggressive as twisted or knotted wire since the individual filaments are unable to cover a large area. Crimped wire is like straight wire but is highly flexible and provides excellent cleaning action. It is used for light applications.
The size of the surface to be cleaned, prepped, or finished determines the size of wire brush to be used. Handheld brushes are sufficient for small jobs and surfaces but require too much effort for large areas. Wheel and end wire brushes are good for getting into small, tight areas, although toothbrush style wire brushes can be used for small jobs that don’t require motorized brushes.
Rotary and cup brushes are the best choices for working large, flat areas, especially when the prep area is covered with rust, corrosion, slag, or other heavy materials. The filament metal can also be a factor since bronze or aluminum may not be heavy enough to completely remove all of the contamination.
The diameters of wire filaments vary from 0.005 to 0.032 inches (0.13 to 0.8 mm). The diameter of the wire affects the gauge of wire that can be used in the brush. Larger-diameter filaments require a larger filament holder to keep the filaments in place. The chart below matches the wire diameter to its grade.
When choosing filaments, the length plays an important part in how abrasive a wire brush will be. When an application requires a less aggressive and gentler brushing, longer, more flexible filaments should be used. Shorter compact filaments are more aggressive, rigid, and work faster.
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