Your Brush Is Leaving Tire Tracks

Have you ever checked the tire tracks on your abrasive scrubber brushes? Just like the tires on your car, industrial brushes in scrubber brush machines leave track marks. And, just as an adjustment to pressure changes the track a tire leaves on the road, so an adjustment in your load will change the imprint on your metal.

Think about this: if you are a mile-per-gallon chaser, you would increase your tires to over inflate them. Your goal is to get as little friction against the road as possible and heavily inflated tires decrease the amount of tire touching the road. 
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Keep in mind, a tire is your connection point to the road, so less friction also means less grip and control—especially when there is water, snow, ice, or other hazards on the road. People who live in cold climates often let air out during the cold months since that softens and lowers the tire, providing more contact. Contact equals friction, which equals traction. 

​When we decrease tire pressure, more rubber makes contact with the road, covering a larger surface.

And that brings us back to our scrubber brush machines. The brush tracks reveal our contact points (friction) with the metal strip surface. But before we get too far, let me tell you one thing: there’s a difference here with non-woven brushes and bristle brushes.

• Non-woven brushes - If you increase the force of the brush on the strip, the brush is able to aggressively scrub the srip. However, while max pressure allows for the max cleaning ability of the brush, it also wears out the brush much quicker than needed.
• With bristle brushes the opposite is true. The max compression on a bristle brush is 3mm into the strip. Any more than that and the cleaning ability decreases and the life of the brush decreases drastically as well. If you go over 3mm of compression of a bristle brush, you are prematurely destroying your brush. The tip of the bristle is the abrasive, so to get the best results, back off before you increase. ​

When we increase the pressure on a non-woven brush, we increase the nip/footprint. This is the “tire track” we were talking about. The “nip” is the area where abrasive scrubber brushes and rolls make contact with a flat surface. When we increase the nip, more abrasive material covers a greater amount of surface.

You can analyze the track marks of a brush by using this diagram. This helps give you an idea of whether the adjustments need to be made to the brush or not.

If you find you DO need to make adjustments and need some help with that process, we have instructions in our Member's Only section to learn how to calculate loads and adjust to resolve issues caused by incorrect pressure. You can log in to that here.

If you still have questions, give us a call. We're always available to help.
Dave Thiemann