Eco Brass Fact Sheet
A comparison of C87850 ECO BRASS® with C89833, C89836 and Envirobrass®
- C87850 alloy ingot is made to a manufacturing specification of max. .05 % lead. This alloy is compliant to AB 1953 and with the Federal EPA definition of a lead free alloy.
- C87850 alloy is currently the only lead free alloy to be designated and registered by the Federal EPA to be anti microbial. ECO BRASS is among the few casting alloys registered. Once Federal and State registrations are complete, Alloy C87850, Eco Brass can be promoted in killing germs. This would make it highly suitable for Hospitals, food preparation areas, schools, gyms and all other public buildings.
- C87850 alloy is significantly lower priced than any of the lead free bismuth alloys.
- C87850 alloy is significantly stronger than the bismuth alloys and the C844 and C836 alloys. This allows for thinner wall thicknesses.
- C87850 alloy runs about 7% less dense than the bismuth alloys. This allows a 7% savings based solely on metal cost. This also infers a 7% increase per thousand weight of product produced.
- C87850 alloy melts and pours between 1750°F and 1900°F generating a 10% power savings over all of the bismuth alloys.
- C87850 generates little to no smoke, from ZnO, and little to no fuming. This means higher metal recovery in the furnace, less slag and it provides a very clean furnace with little to no cleaning required. This also means that ZnO by-products will be significantly lower.
- Because C87850 alloy has no bismuth it has exceptional cold and warm embrittlement cracking resistance. Bismuth is very similar to lead in that it remains independent of the other elements alloyed with it. Bismuth is also very similar to water in that as it cools it actually expands causing stress within the cast part. C87850 alloy has none of these issues.
- C87850 alloy is typically adaptable to all current foundry gating, risering and molding operations. Properly gated patterns will require little to no modifications. Foundry yields will remain the same and increase as the learning curve for using C87850 develops in the foundry.
- C87850 can be plated without any additional copper flashing.
- C87850 is NSF pending. We expect to have full approval within 60 days.
- C87850 alloy is a three phase alloy that creates (type #1 chips) when machined. This means that the machined chips will be small and fully reusable in the foundry. The minimal drosses and slags are easily sellable into any market or to any copper refinery.
- C87850 alloy, Eco Brass, is globally available with no constraints of supply or capacity or elements such as bismuth.
- C87850 alloy, Eco Brass, achieves 80-100% machinability of the other free cutting alloys without the concerns of micro porosity.
Many claims have been made about all types of problems arising from the use of C87850. None of these claims have been proven. We ask that production foundries look long and hard at the decisions being made to be compliant with AB 1953 as well as the upcoming new Federal EPA standards for airborne leads. C87850 alloy has been used successfully in Japan for over 10 years with more than 40,000,000 pounds poured and zero field failures. All of us are in this together. The decisions we make today will have big impacts for our industry and our ability to be competitive in the market place.
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