The importance of thread cleaning

There are many factors that determine the quality of a bolted connection. One of the most important factors is friction, which can be influenced in many ways. Overcoming the friction caused by external factors like corrosion, old grease or concrete residue is one of the most time-consuming parts of (de)assembling bolted connections. The amount of friction has great impact on the amount of torque that is needed to achieve the desired bolt load. Professional thread cleaning leads to a more predictable and lower coefficient of friction over the entire length of the thread. That is why cleaning nuts and bolts before re-using them is an important step in any bolting process.

The advantages of using BoltClean thread cleaners

Cleaning methods

In general, we can diversify four methods for cleaning threads on nuts and bolts.

  • Machine-Brushing
  • Recutting threads
  • Sandblasting
  • Manual brushing

We performed laboratory tests to determine the effects of each cleaning method. The outcomes showed that machine-brushing has got many advantages over other methods.

BoltClean lab testing
Thread cleaning application

Advantages of machine brushing over manual brushing

Advantages over recutting thread or sandblasting

Sand blasting damages threads and therefore results in a bigger scatter in bolt load.
Sandblasting bolt
Sandblasted bolt under a microscope

Applications

BoltClean thread cleaners are used in a wide variety of industries.