Brass has excellent plasticity and high strength, good machinability, is easy to weld, and is very stable against general corrosion, but it is prone to stress corrosion cracking. Brass strip is an alloy of copper and zinc, named for its yellow color.
Brass strip has good mechanical properties and wear resistance, making it suitable for manufacturing precision instruments and ship parts. Brass produces a pleasant sound when struck, so instruments such as gongs, cymbals, bells, and horns are made of brass. Based on chemical composition, brass is divided into two types: ordinary brass and special brass.
(1) Ordinary brass is a binary alloy of copper and zinc. Due to its good plasticity, it is suitable for manufacturing plates, rods, wires, tubes, and deep-drawn parts such as condenser tubes, heat dissipation tubes, and mechanical and electrical components. Brass with average copper content of 62% and 59% can also be cast, known as cast brass.
(2) Special brass is formed by adding elements such as aluminum, silicon, manganese, lead, and tin to the copper-zinc alloy to achieve higher strength, corrosion resistance, and good casting properties. Examples include lead brass, tin brass, aluminum brass, silicon brass, and manganese brass.
If it is a multi-component alloy composed of two or more elements, it is called special brass. For example, copper alloys composed of lead, tin, manganese, nickel, iron, and silicon. Brass has strong wear resistance. Special brass, also known as特種黃銅 (special brass), has high strength, great hardness, and strong chemical corrosion resistance. It also exhibits outstanding machinability. The seamless copper tubes drawn from brass are soft and highly wear-resistant. Brass seamless tubes can be used in heat exchangers, condensers, low-temperature pipelines, and submarine transport pipes. They are used to manufacture plates, strips, rods, tubes, and cast parts. With a copper content of 62% to 68%, it has strong plasticity and is used to manufacture pressure-resistant equipment.