How is Wire Mesh Made?

What is wire mesh?

Wire mesh is a common type of wire mesh that consists of parallel rows and crossed columns of wire. Although similar in appearance and application, perforated metal sheets and expanded metal sheets are not types of wire mesh.  Wire mesh comes in an almost limitless amount of shapes and sizes, and a large variety of materials and metal alloys.

How is wire mesh made?

Wire mesh can be made from many different metals - like carbon steel or stainless steel - with a variety of gauges and hole sizes. There are two basic types of wire mesh: woven wire mesh and welded wire mesh. There are two common types of wire mesh.

Woven Wire Mesh

The process of weaving wire into a mesh is similar to that of weaving cloth. First, long strands of wire are set on a loom and run parallel through the machine like a yarn warp.

As the machine runs, the strand lifts alternate strands of the wire, allowing the shuttle to pass vertically through the strands and pull along the filling threads, similar to a weft. The slats then press the filling threads against the mesh and the harness lifts the opposite strands so that the shuttles can pass in opposite directions, producing an up-and-down weave.

Woven wire mesh has a series of intersecting wires, similar to woven fabric. Typically, the threads are woven above and below the vertical wires to produce a stable sheet. This pattern is called "plain weave wire mesh". For applications requiring a more flexible sheet, a "twill weave" can be used.

This involves weaving the wire above the 2 perpendicular wires, then below the next set of 2 perpendicular wires, and so on. There are no welded seams on the braided wire mesh. Instead, they are fed into a loom-like machine that feeds straight wires through the selected weave pattern. The wire is then bent to the opposite position and the next straight line is passed through the pattern. The machine continues this process until the desired size is reached, and then the completed wire mesh sheet is cut to the desired size.

Welded wire mesh

Another type of wire mesh, sometimes called welded wire mesh, can be made with an automatic wire welding machine. This type of mesh consists of a series of parallel and perpendicular wires that are spaced apart at equal distances and welded at intersections.

To set up the machine, wires are passed through a row of automatic feeders that push long parallel strands of wire through the welder. To create the cross wires, another feeder places short vertical strands on top of the parallel wires. At the intersection between the parallel and vertical wires, a row of resistance weld heads then fuses the joint and the net is pulled forward while the other vertical wire drops.

Our Factory mainly manufactures stainless steel wire mesh, dutch woven wire cloth, crimped wire mesh, wire mesh for fitering liquid and gas, oblong-square mesh, copper wire mesh, filter, conveyer belt, and etc. Brass wire mesh is also popular in the grid industry, especially for custom products.