Insight of Woven Mesh screens used in industrial services

Woven wire mesh is processed in various ways to develop the filter screen. Wire cloth and gauze are commonly use words to refer meshes made from fine wire grades. Bolting cloth refers to lightweight forms of square mesh clothes made from the finest wires.

A wide range of mesh screens are made by weaving wires separately. Two major categories of mesh screens are plan weave and zero aperture filter clothes.

In a woven mesh screen, each warp or weft wire bends where it passes over or beneath the wire of other type. Wire crimping occurs during the weaving process for fine wires, however the crimp has to be imposed on the wire above a specific thickness, before it is fed into the position. However this includes a stage to the weaving process, it has a significant advantage of retaining the crossing wire in a place.

Woven wire mesh screens are widely used for filtration for more than a century. They are made in diverse range of materials and specification. The mesh can be woven from virtually a metal with sufficient ductility to be drawn into wire form, specifically nickel-chrome steels, Monel mesh screens and other nickel base alloys. Nickel and nickel alloys are used for high temperature services. These alloys include Inconel, Hastelloy and Incoloy.

The least useful size of wire used is based on the alloy from which it is made, the mesh strength, the service temperature and corrosion level and abrasion probably occur during the service. So, the finer wire diameters in aluminium, copper etc are not usually used for other than ordinary applications. Stainless steel mesh are made from wires under 15 micro-m.

The plain dutch weave is a zero aperture weave. It is a plain weave with larger diameter wires similar to warp and straight, while the weft wires are crimped at each pass. The mesh developed from this weave extends from 340 micro-m to 15 micro-m in aperture size. The holes are small, and not straight through the mesh. The cloth is durable and compact with high strength. Two differences of this type of mesh occur, first that includes two warp wires rather one and that is usually selected for holes below 14 micro-m or when higher strength is needed. Other type includes finer warp and weft wires leading to better flow rates and higher tolerance.

In a reverse plain dutch weave, everything followed is similar, except the factor that thicker wire treats as weft. This type of mesh is substantially stronger and is even the most durable weave to produce filter mesh for commercial filtration applications. It features good flow and high dirt retaining capacity, for which it is widely used on the industrial scale.

With similar combination of warp and weft wires, two basic types of twilled dutch weave are developed. Using heavy warp wires in this weave allows the production of the finest grades of woven wire cloth, while also offering the benefit of smooth surface on both sides of the mesh. Dutch weave has less flow resistance and also rough surfaces on both sides.