Precision Brush Company’s stem brushes, also referred to as End Brush, can be used on portable air and electric tools where balance is critical, as in CNC machining centers, and robotic and automated machinery. Manufactured with 1/4” mounting shanks, they can be quickly installed in chucks or collets and are designed to work where space limitations are a factor.

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Stem-mounted brushes are ideal for polishing, deburring, and cleaning metal surfaces. They also work well for cross-hole deburring, blending tool marks, and breaking sharp edges.

Wire Brushes

Introduction

This article covers all the information you need to know about wire brushes.

You will learn about topics such as:

• What is a Wire Brush?
• Types of Wire Brushes
• How Wire Brushes are Made
• Uses for Wire Brushes
• And much more

Chapter One – What is a Wire Brush?

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 application method 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.

Chapter Two – Types of Wire Brushes

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

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.

Channel Scratch Brushes

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.

Welder Brushes

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.

Toothbrush Style Wire Brushes

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.

Utility Brushes

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.

Flat Wire Broom Brushes

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 Brushes

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 in various 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

Twisted wire brushes have 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 Brushes

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

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 more than 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, securing the filaments and center wire in place.

Chapter Three - How Wire Brushes are Made

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: 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.

Wire Brush Filament

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 inches.

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

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.

Steel

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.

Coated Tin

The applications that can use coated tin brushes are limited. Coated tin filaments can be straight or crimped for deburring or decarbonizing.

Brass

Brass filaments are used on surfaces when there is material to be removed but a need to avoid harming the substrate. Since brass does not produce sparks, it can be used in potentially flammable environments as a safe alternative to steel.

Stainless Steel Grades

Grades of stainless steel filaments include 302, 304, and 316. Like most stainless steel, grade 302 is corrosion and rust-resistant—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 typically used in high humidity and saltwater applications.

Nickel Silver

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, producing a more versatile filament material.

Styles of Filaments

There are four basic styles of filaments: twisted, crimped, level or straight, and rectangular.

• Twisted – Twisted filaments are created by taking crimped or straight filaments and twisting several of them together. The combined diameters increase the diameter of the individual filaments, giving them the ability to clean larger areas.
• Round Crimp – Round crimped filaments have a dense wave appearance that offers stronger brush action. The nature of the crimp is determined by the amplitude, depth of crimp, frequency, and crimps per inch.
• Level or Straight – Straight or level filaments are less dense and used for lighter, less abrasive applications.
• Rectangular – Rectangular style filaments are capable of applying far more abrasion because of their solid line contact with a surface. They offer excellent performance for heavy-duty applications.

Wire Brush Filament Holders

Unlike standard brushes that have handles, wire brush filaments are encapsulated in various holders designed to keep the filaments compact and secure. The types of holders include the traditional handle, cups, wires, and metal strips. Various methods are used to ensure that the filaments are securely placed.

Cup

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.

Handles

The handles for wire brushes are much like those 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, including twisting, compression, forcible insertion, or pressurization. In the case of plastic handles, filaments may be inserted during formation for a more secure fit.

Handles for twisted wire brushes differ from the methods used to insert filaments into solid handles. For twisted wire brushes, the filaments are placed between two wires that are twisted to hold the filaments in place. The brush handle is an extension of the twisted wires.

Cylinder

The various names for 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

Wheel brushes, or spiral brushes, are of 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.

Strip

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.

Chapter Four – Uses for Wire Brushes

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.

Uses for Wire Brushes

Abrading with Wire Brushes

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 Brushing with Wire Brushes