The brushes used to surface clean and finish flat metal strip are made from one of two mediums: a bristle filament or non-woven material. The distinctions between the two and the pro’s and con’s of each will be an ongoing conversation in our blogs, emails, and podcast, so you are well informed when making a decision between which to choose. Many advancements have been made in both medias and what was true—and what you knew—in the past most likely has changed. One big difference is that we’re now able to develop non-woven brushes to have same life span as bristle brushes.
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Non-Woven Brushes: The Process
In searching for a place to start, the beginning always seems to be a fitting place. Our friends at 3M are the founding fathers of non-woven material. Their trade name for this material is Scotchbrite™. Today, many manufactures around the world develop and manufacture non-woven materials. This article will describe to you the basic way the material is made.
We start with a pot of hot nylon and extrude it through a tube. At the end of that tube, blades are timed to cut the strand of nylon to similar length. These very thin nylon strands are cut and then blown into the air within a chamber. Once the desired amount of nylon strands are suspended in air, the fans shut off and the nylon strands fall to the floor of the chamber in a sporadic pattern, creating a carpet-like square. This carpet square is then compressed to the required thickness.
This carpet of nylon filament is called non-woven material or 3M’s trade name Scotchbrite™. This is the material you might find in the cleaning supplies under your skin. A scrub pad, or the rough side of a sponge, for example, is made from non-woven steel material.
For our purposes of cleaning and finishing strip, non-woven material needs an abrasive grit. We get this grit by sending the nylon carpet through a glueing station to soak in glue. This glue-soaked, non-woven material then runs through a grit station. Grit in a specified grain size is selected, and then statistically distributed to adhere to the non-woven carpet to create the correct abrasion.
The material enters a final station where the glue is dried in an oven. Now you have a carpet of abrasive non-woven material.
The material is cut into circles or strips and are assembled onto a brush. (We’ll talk about how brushes are constructed in a different article.)
In searching for a place to start, the beginning always seems to be a fitting place. Our friends at 3M are the founding fathers of non-woven material. Their trade name for this material is Scotchbrite™. Today, many manufactures around the world develop and manufacture non-woven materials. This article will describe to you the basic way the material is made.
We start with a pot of hot nylon and extrude it through a tube. At the end of that tube, blades are timed to cut the strand of nylon to similar length. These very thin nylon strands are cut and then blown into the air within a chamber. Once the desired amount of nylon strands are suspended in air, the fans shut off and the nylon strands fall to the floor of the chamber in a sporadic pattern, creating a carpet-like square. This carpet square is then compressed to the required thickness.
This carpet of nylon filament is called non-woven material or 3M’s trade name Scotchbrite™. This is the material you might find in the cleaning supplies under your skin. A scrub pad, or the rough side of a sponge, for example, is made from non-woven steel material.
For our purposes of cleaning and finishing strip, non-woven material needs an abrasive grit. We get this grit by sending the nylon carpet through a glueing station to soak in glue. This glue-soaked, non-woven material then runs through a grit station. Grit in a specified grain size is selected, and then statistically distributed to adhere to the non-woven carpet to create the correct abrasion.
The material enters a final station where the glue is dried in an oven. Now you have a carpet of abrasive non-woven material.
The material is cut into circles or strips and are assembled onto a brush. (We’ll talk about how brushes are constructed in a different article.)
The drawing below illustrates what I described. The red lines represent the nylon filament strand, the grey mounds represent the glue or bond, and the yellow triangles illustrate the abrasive grit.
The drawing below illustrates how Non-Woven material reacts to the surface of our flat metal strip. In most cases, the strip isn’t flat and we need to compensate for edge wave, buckle, and other deformities. At the microscopic level, the surface area of our flat metal is a crystal-like structure with peaks and valleys. The valleys have dirt and iron fines in them that need to be removed. If we have a very hard bristle brush, it does not get into these valleys. This is the advantage of a non-woven brush. It’s pliable, spring-compression effect can get into these valleys. Think of a sponge: it’s very soft but when it’s compressed, it is able to get into any surface area you are trying to clean.
At APT, we can construct non-woven brushes to accommodate our clients’ needs by manipulating the hardness to appropriately respond the demands of the strip. We can design a brush specific to your application so you can achieve better results than off-the-shelf brushes. We have the ability to offer hundreds of finishes so the grit size and abrasiveness of your brush suits your job. The advantages to this are obvious: better surface finish, longer-lasting brushes, and a significant savings of both cost and time.
In the past, users of non-woven brushes were limited in the choices of grit size and abrasiveness, forced to pay for “off-the-shelf” non-woven brushes designed for the masses. Today, brushes can be customized for your job, saving time and producing far better results.
In the past, users of non-woven brushes were limited in the choices of grit size and abrasiveness, forced to pay for “off-the-shelf” non-woven brushes designed for the masses. Today, brushes can be customized for your job, saving time and producing far better results.
