Heavy duty brushes for pipeline construction
OSBORN Steel Wire Brushes provide an excellent cleaning solution for weld seams prior to re-welding. The removal of cinder and oxidisation is achieved in a complete and efficient manner. Brushes do not remove stock, as do other cleaning mediums, whilst exposing possible defects for immediate correction. Additionally the use of brushes can reduce the number of weld seams needed in some applications resulting in reduced costs. In practice the new technology works as follows: The first, close-fitting and low-lying welding seam "root" is cleaned as hitherto with chip-removing grinding wheels. Different from the past, the welding seams "Hot Pass", the filling seams "Fill Layers" and the cover seam "Cap" are cleaned manually or automatically, with brushes that are tailored to their specific use, without damaging the welding seam that has been laboriously applied. This is a clear advantage as compared to grinding wheels, which, due to their chipping effect, always remove material from the welding seam. Even the "undercut", the problem zones that arise under the influence of heat during welding and that are normally difficult to reach, can be cleaned effectively with wire brushes. For the most commonly used OSBORN brush, with a diameter of 171 mm and 76 knots, almost 500,000 sharp wire tips per second are applied to the weld seam. These move over the surface at a speed of over more than 280 km/h and thus remove even the smallest contaminants. Rugged knot-type construction provides high brush flexibility, more uniform results, maximum safety and efficient operation at high speeds.