The truth about 'brass' brushes  

The truth about 'brass' brushes

I have an order sitting in my Prusa cart, but with shipping costing a lot to the UK, I like to wait until I need a fair bit before ordering. I have a couple of Prusa brass brushes in there, but I needed a new one quickly.

So I bought the 'Amazon's Choice' set – the "3 Pcs Metal Brush Small Wire Brushes for Cleaning 3D Printer Nozzle Cleaner Tool Copper Brush Brass Wire Toothbrush Masonry Brush Brass Brush Handle Hot End Cleaning Wire Bristle Welding Slag and Rust" https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CWLCNLXX

Great, I thought – copper's fairly soft, so it won't damage my nozzles when I use them for cleaning. And after all, that's what they're claimed to be for, and lots of 'reviews' say they're great.

I was immediately suspicious of how stiff they were, so tried a magnet on them. It stuck. Really well. So, they're likely steel with a brass-coloured coating. I don't want to be scrubbing my nozzle with this. I complained to Amazon and got a refund but that doesn't help anyone else. Did they change the listing? No, of course not.

So, I saw that Halfords has the Rolson brush sets, so popped in to get some until I can order the decent ones from Prusa. After all, I've had them before and they seemed to be proper brass: https://www.halfords.com/tools/hand-tools/cutting-and-filing/rolson-6pc-mini-wire-brush-set-710281.html

I took a magnet with me just to be sure, and it stuck straight to the bristles through the plastic packaging. More steel that'll likely cause damage to the nozzle.

Luckily I found this spark plug cleaning brush, which is proper brass, so bought it. https://www.halfords.com/tools/hand-tools/all-hand-tools/halfords-spark-plug-brush-689992.html

The moral of this long and drawn out story is to be careful what you use to clean your nozzles as you could be scratching away at them thanks to the nefarious listings we know we should expect from Amazon, and mis-sold products in stores too.