Cylinder brushes are used for conveyor cleaning or wide face brushing of a substrate in a production environment. Spiral wound cylinder brushes are based on our Strip Brush technology, and are individually designed to meet the customer's specifications. Paddle wheel style conveyor cleaning brushes also utilize our strip brush technology and offer a customer refillable brush core.

Spiral Brush has cylinder brush design experience in a broad range of applications including: agriculture, bakery oven belts, battery production, block and brick production, concrete form cleaning, fiberglass insulation, filtration screen cleaning, foundry sand conveyors, glass cleaning, industrial pass-through ovens, metal fabricating, paper mills, oil & gas pipeline inspection, primary metals, printing, raised metal roofing, rubber and plastics, sawmills and plywood production.


 

CYLINDER BRUSH
 

Our  experienced customer service associates work with you to understand the application, the material to be brushed, the desired finish, the operating environment, and the equipment on which the brush will be installed. We will help you to determine the appropriate core, shaft, channel size and brush materials, establish power requirements, a recommended range of operating speed, and determine the need for dynamically balancing the cylinder brush.

Spiral wound cylinder brushes are typically mounted on a shaft or a tubular core. Brush strip is wound around and attached to the arbor in the appropriate density or spacing. Close-wound conveyor cleaning brushes present a dense brush face and provide a consistent wide face scrubbing action. Open-wound brushes have spacing or pitch between the rows of helically-wound brush strips to facilitate moving loose product or debris to one side, to both sides, or to the center. Cylinder brush outer diameters range from 1 5/8" to 45", while inside diameters range from ½" up to 30" or larger. Cylinder brushes can be up to 20 feet long. The strip channel material options are galvanized steel, stainless steel, brass and aluminum. The shaft or core onto which the brush will be mounted can be made of steel, stainless steel, or other materials suitable for the application.
 

Mounting Options:

• Shaft: Spiral can manufacture a solid or tubular shaft to the customer's drawings or specifications, or the customer can supply their own shaft. Shafts may include keyways as required for drive purposes. Brushes can be welded directly to the shaft or secured by means of metal clips attached to the shaft. Brushes mounted on a shaft are typically refillable as long as the shaft remains in good condition.

• Throw-Away Core: For the convenience of easy replacement, Spiral can assemble the brush on an economical thin wall tube with end-bushings to be mounted onto the customer's driven shaft. Rather than maintaining a spare brush on hand and returning the entire worn brush for refill, simply order a  new brush and install it in the place of the old brush.

• Refillable Core: For a more economical long term solution, the core can be made from heavier wall tube and can be returned for refill multiple times. The shaft or journals may be an integral part of the core design or may be removable for ease of replacement. Refilling saves the cost of remaking the shaft or core.

• Unmounted Brush Refill: Customers may choose to buy the loose wound brush coil to mount on their own shaft or cores.

• Dynamic Balancing: For brushes operating at speeds in excess of 500 revolutions per minute, dynamic balancing is recommended to reduce vibration and improve the consistency of brushing action.

• Crating: Due to weight, size, and other shipping considerations, cylinder brushes over a certain size will be considered for packaging in a wooden crate which may be reused for future refill transportation purposes. This determination is made at the time of brush design, and the cost of the crate is quoted separately.

Brush Fill Materials:

Cylindrical conveyor cleaning brushes can be filled with any of our selection of materials:

• Carbon steel wires
• Stainless steel wires
• Brass coated wires
• Brass wires
• Nylon Bristles
• Abrasive Bristles
• Polypropylene

Carbon steel wire:
Wire brushes made from steel wire are suitable for a wide variety of applications and are generally the most economical and most widely available of the different wire brush options. Steel wire is the hardest of the commonly offered brush wires, providing a high fatigue life and durable cutting action. Steel wire is most appropriate for work on steel and iron workpieces, but may also be used on wood, aluminum, brass and copper; however the softer the material to be brushed, the more likely that a steel wire brush will cut into the material and remove base material in addition to the targeted coating or contamination. Steel wire is appropriate for constant operating temperatures up to 275° F, but can be used where the brush will come in contact with higher temperatures for shorter periods of time. When ambient temperatures will exceed 275°F, stainless steel wire should be considered.

Stainless steel wires: 
Wire brushes made from stainless steel wire are suitable for work on stainless steel and aluminum fabricated products, and for use in direct food-contact applications, in higher heat situations, and in environments where the brush wire may be exposed to moisture or high humidity on a repeated basis. We feature 304 Stainless Steel wire to offer a higher analysis wire to customers working on either 302 0r 304 stainless workpieces.

Stainless steel wire is generally recommended for continuous operating temperatures up to 600°F.
 

Stainless Steel Wires Cylinder Brush

Brass Wire:
Brass wire is softer than steel wire or stainless steel wire, and offers a brushing action that will not scratch harder metals. Our brass wire is Alloy 260, composed of 70% Copper and 30% Zinc. If your work-piece is either brass or copper, then brass wire is the most suitable choice. Brass wire (as well as bronze wire) will not generate sparks when struck against other metallic surfaces, and is suitable for hazardous environments (1) . Brass wire is also an excellent conductor of electrical energy (28% IACS), and is suitable for static reduction applications when incorporated into a brass wire strip brush. Brass is appropriate for operating environments up to 300°F constant temperature. Brass wire is also relatively corrosion resistant.

Popular Applications for Brass Wire brushes:

• Cleaning plastic extrusion parts, including molds, dies, and extruder barrels
• Cleaning machine parts where sparks might pose a risk of fire or explosion
• Cleaning metal parts without removing any of the base material.
• Satin finishing aluminum extrusions or sheet
• Static reduction brushes for industrial environments

Bronze wire:
Bronze wire is harder and stiffer than brass wire. We utilize a Phosphor Bronze wire, Alloy 510, consisting of 95% Copper and 5% Tin. The presence of Tin improves fatigue strength and tensile strength over the C-260 brass wire.

Bronze wire will not generate sparks when struck against other metallic surfaces, and is suitable for hazardous environments (1) . Bronze wire is a good conductor of electrical energy (15% IACS), and is suitable for static reduction applications when incorporated into a bronze wire strip brush with a brass channel backing. Bronze is appropriate for operating environments up to 400°F constant temperature. Bronze wire is also relatively corrosion resistant.

Popular Applications for Bronze Wire brushes:

• Cleaning plastic extrusion parts, including molds, dies, and extruder barrels
• Wiping tenter frame rollers in synthetic fiber plants
• Cleaning machine parts where sparks might pose a risk of fire or explosion
• Cleaning metal parts without removing any of the base material.
• Satin finishing aluminum extrusions or sheet
• Static reduction brushes for industrial environments

Brass Plated Steel Wire:
When used in brushes, brass plated steel wire is prized for its resistance to corrosion, relatively low cost, conductive brass coating, and high fatigue properties. Originally designed for applications such as hose-reinforcement and tire cord, this wire has found applications in industrial brushes for wire descaling and tire re-tread preparation.

Nylon Bristles:
Nylon filled industrial brushes are suitable for a range of applications from aggressive scrubbing to dusting, in both dry and wet environments. Brushes with Nylon fill offer the following characteristics in most applications: excellent fatigue life, good abrasion resistance, low to moderate absorption of water (3% to 9%) leading to only a temporary reduction in stiffness, an excellent bend recovery rate, resistance to most common solvents, and suitability for use in weak acids. Nylon 6.6 is a medium grade suitable for most dry industrial applications and constitutes our regular duty filament for industrial applications. Nylon 6.6 has a higher moisture absorption rate at 9%, and therefore loses approximately half its stiffness when exposed to wet environments. Nylon 6.6 also has limited resistance to many common chemicals.Nylon 6.12 is a higher performance grade for industrial and food-contact applications with the following attributes: a significantly greater wet stiffness modulus than 6.6 nylon, resistance to petroleum distillates, benzene aromatic hydrocarbons, ethyl acetate esters, and trichloroethylene hydrocarbons. Nylon 6.12 is FDA approved for direct food contact.

Abrasive Bristles:
Abrasive grit encapsulated into the extruded nylon filament allows an abrasive nylon brush to perform deburring, edge blending, and surface finishing. Power brushes and Cylinder brushes made with abrasive nylon deliver features of a brush: flexibility of design and conformability to irregular surfaces, while also imparting the benefits of an abrasive: selection of grit sizes to control finish, and functionality for deburring, cleaning, surface finishing, and edge blending. Abrasive Nylon is suitable for use on a broad range of materials.

Cylinder brushes:
Abrasive Nylon filled cylinder brushes are used to scrub surfaces of sheet or coiled metal before subsequent coatings or treatments are applied. Custom design allows tailoring of brush to exact requirements of process.

For many dry industrial applications Nylon 6-6 is acceptable, while more demanding applications may require the additional heat resistance, lower water absorption and increased toughness of a Nylon 6.12. Both Silicon Carbide grit and Aluminum Oxide grit are available, and approximate a 30% loading by weight in the extruded nylon filament. Silicon Carbide is more commonly used because it is harder and sharper than aluminum oxide, and it is preferred for finishing ferrous metals. Aluminum oxide grit is less likely to fracture and is preferred for finishing softer metals including stainless steel and aluminum, wood and plastics. Aluminum Oxide also eliminates the small risk of contamination of the stainless steel or aluminum surface by free carbon deposits from the silicon carbide.  Different from a typical wire brush, where the operating guidance is to use the tips of the wires to do the work with light pressure and high brush face speed, abrasive nylon brushes abrade with the sides of the filament as well as the tips because the grit is spread randomly throughout the filament. As a result, lower brush speeds and greater engagement of the work-piece into the brush face may contribute to increased brush effectiveness. A work-piece requiring finishing of contoured or recessed surfaces can be accommodated with a longer trim brush, controlling the brush speed, and by engaging the work-piece into the brush face up to 1/8th of the length of the brush trim.

Polypropylene Bristles:
Polypropylene filled brushes are suitable for a range of applications from aggressive scrubbing to light dusting, depending on the brush type, filament size, and trim length selected. Brushes filled with polypropylene filament are particularly useful in conditions of high moisture where the maintenance of consistent stiffness is desired. Such applications include water-based part washing, fruit and vegetable washing, and brush seals exposed to wash down or environmental conditions. Polypropylene offers good chemical resistance to acids and many solvents, with the exception of trichloroethylene hydrocarbons, benzene, carbon tetrachloride, chlorine, and camphor.

Industries Served
  ~Glass Plate Manufacturers
  ~Woodworking Facilities
  ~Paper & Corrugated Plants
  ~Pharmaceutical Plants
  ~Metal Stampers
  ~Concrete Product Manufacturers
 

Brass Wire Cylinder Brush

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