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The OnlineMetals Guide to Brass
Brass is one of the most-used materials in the world. The term brass generally applies to alloys of
copper where the main alloying ingredient beside copper is zinc. Other alloys
of copper where the main alloying ingredient is tin are usually referred to as bronze.
Brass is generally known for several things - decent strength and electrical conductivity, it can be polished easily,
and there seems to be a brass for just about every application. With few exceptions, most notably C230 Red Brass and
C770 Nickel Silver, materials in this category generally are yellow in color.
OnlineMetals.com currently stocks six brass alloys.
230 Brass (Red Brass)
As the name would imply, this material is reddish in color. It is one of the stronger brass items that we carry.
| C230 Red Brass |
| Minimum Properties |
Ultimate Tensile Strength, psi |
70,300 |
| Yield Strength, psi |
57,300 |
| Elongation |
5% |
| Rockwell Hardness |
B77 |
| Chemistry |
Copper (Cu) |
84 - 86% |
| Zinc (Zn) |
15% |
| Iron (Fe) |
0.05% min |
| Lead (Pb) |
0.06% min |
260 Brass (Cartridge Brass)
260 Brass is known by about a zillion different names, but the most common are yellow brass and cartridge brass, the
second because it is generally used for shell casings. As a rule, it is only available in sheet, and is not very
machinable, but is a great combination of formability and workability.
| C260 Cartridge Brass |
| Minimum Properties |
Ultimate Tensile Strength, psi |
61,600 |
| Yield Strength, psi |
52,200 |
| Elongation |
23% |
| Rockwell Hardness |
B77 |
| Chemistry |
Copper (Cu) |
68.5 - 71.5% |
| Zinc (Zn) |
28.5 - 31.5% |
| Iron (Fe) |
0.05% max |
| Lead (Pb) |
0.07% max |
330 Brass (no nickname for this brass, and it gets picked on by the other brasses)
We've never figured out why this material doesn't have a nickname, but that is the metals industry for you. It is
normally only available in tubing products, and has a good balance of both workability and machinability (the latter
due to the presence of lead).
If you've ever seen a brass fire pole, or, um, any other kind of brass poles, chances are you were looking at 330 Brass.
| C330 Brass |
| Minimum Properties |
Ultimate Tensile Strength, psi |
65,300 |
| Yield Strength, psi |
50,000 |
| Elongation |
32% |
| Rockwell Hardness |
B70 |
| Chemistry |
Copper (Cu) |
65 - 68% |
| Zinc (Zn) |
33.5% |
| Iron (Fe) |
0.07% max |
| Lead (Pb) |
0.2 - 0.8% |
360 Brass (Free Machining Brass)
Free Machining brass is the most commonly used of the brass rod and bar items. The presence of lead in the alloy
creates a highly machinable material that can easily be cut and shaped into whatever you need. It is not so good,
however, at forming operations.
| C360 Free Machining Brass |
| Minimum Properties |
Ultimate Tensile Strength, psi |
58,000 |
| Yield Strength, psi |
45,000 |
| Elongation |
25% |
| Rockwell Hardness |
B78 |
| Chemistry |
Copper (Cu) |
60 - 63% |
| Zinc (Zn) |
35.5% |
| Iron (Fe) |
0.35% min |
| Lead (Pb) |
2.5 - 3.7% |
464 Naval Brass / Naval Bronze
Used primarily in applications where corrosion resistance is important, the material has a small amount of tin added to help
deal with corrosion, especially in seawater.
| C464 Naval Brass / Naval Bronze |
| Minimum Properties |
Ultimate Tensile Strength, psi |
75,000 |
| Yield Strength, psi |
52,900 |
| Elongation |
20% |
| Rockwell Hardness |
B82 |
| Chemistry |
Copper (Cu) |
59 - 62% |
| Zinc (Zn) |
39.25% |
| Iron (Fe) |
0.10% max |
| Tin (Sn) |
0.5 - 1.00% |
770 (Nickel Silver)
Nickel Silver is named for its silvery appearance, but surprisingly contains no silver at all.
| C770 Nickel Silver |
| Minimum Properties |
Ultimate Tensile Strength, psi |
108,000 |
| Yield Strength, psi |
89,900 |
| Elongation |
2.5% |
| Rockwell Hardness |
B96 |
| Chemistry |
Copper (Cu) |
53.5 - 56.5% |
| Iron (Fe) |
0.25% max |
| Manganese (Mn) |
0.5% max |
| Nickel (Ni) |
16.5 - 19.5% |
| Lead (Pb) |
0.1% max |
| Zinc (Zn) |
27% |
At OnlineMetals, we all failed shop class. Multiple times. As a matter of fact, our employment applications
specifically ask to see people's grades for their high school shop classes. If they're too high, they go
into the rejected pile. We're also not engineers, and cannot make any specific recommendations about the suitability
of a given alloy, temper, or shape for your project or application.
All technical data is for comparison purposes only and is NOT FOR DESIGN. It has been compiled
from sources we believe to be accurate but cannot guarantee. This ends the part of the website
that our pointy-headed lawyers made us put in.
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