Bridging the Gap Between Long Life and Superior Material Removal in Weld Cleanup

From a commodity standpoint, our industry is under a tremendous amount of pressure to make abrasives that compete with the prices offered by manufacturers of “cheap” consumables. However, users of abrasives in oil and gas and pipe construction work value performance above all other factors: they typically measure how long an abrasive lasts and how well it executes its designated function. For a competitive advantage in weld cleanup, they try to find an abrasive that bridges the gap between longer life and superior material removal. When it comes to stringer beads, manufacturers were previously unable to achieve best-in-class results in both product life and material removal. Lower-end abrasive brushes might cut well, but they won’t last very long and often have long wire breakage. To achieve the best possible performance with these, fabricators sometimes had to change out their tools five times a day.

To resolve this issue, the TufBrush™ 4-inch stringer bead provides twice the life and 15 percent better removal than its closest-tested competitor. Designed to last longer and work faster than competitive brushes, this stringer bead reduces the number of brush changes and increases efficiency so that users can complete tasks faster with more effective material removal. It also alleviates some of the discomfort fabricators experience from the vibration of their power tools, often referred to as “white finger.” A lot of technology and effort are embedded into dampening the vibration of this stringer bead and finding the right ergonomics to make it safer, creating a work environment where workers don’t have pain from the tool: the patented vibration dampening technology in this 4-inch stringer bead will hit the markets as a phase two launch in 2018.

No abrasive should be developed for performance without considering its safety and ease of use. For example, some high performing stringer beads can, under high rpm, have long wire breakage that can poke and even pierce the skin of an operator. To mitigate this issue, proprietary TufWire technology has been designed to increase rigidity and provide up to three times the aggressiveness of standard carbon steel wire in the nearest competitor’s stringer bead. That’s not all. New knot technology and a new knot design have been developed that increase the amount of wire on the surface while balancing column strength and flexibility to provide more efficient deburring and cleaning. A typical stringer bead knot would be much narrower, but this new technology is able to keep the knot tight enough to use for a stringer bead application. These new technologies minimize long wire breakage and make work safer for the operator. (Note: Though everything about these new brushes is designed with safety in mind to abide by the ANSI standard for safety in-use, operators should still always wear the proper safety equipment, including gloves and safety glasses.)

Another way to improve the performance of a stringer bead is to rethink all of the value aspects that make the product. A lot of time, resources and effort have gone into maximizing the overall performance of each component within the TufBrush, including the details and design aspects of the face plates, discs and nut – all resulting in a new patent. For example, a number of different simulation models were examined to make sure all of the components were designed to work well together at high speeds and various forces, all while maintaining the goals of best-in-class performance and ease of use. This stringer bead brush is completely designed, engineered and tested in the United States to provide consistency from brush to brush with proprietary wire.

In our attempt to deliver the highest performance possible for a stringer bead brush, we discovered it is possible for users to get the longest lasting brush without sacrificing superior cut and removal: the TufBrush is ideal for any application that involves heavy or radial deburring, including weld cleanup, root and hot pass, surface preparation, pipe joining and other jobs. The stringer gets its name from a weld bead that is cleaned up, so TufBrush works well with any type of generalized surface preparation. Generally, this stringer bead is acceptable for any type of welding.