🟡 BRASS
Brass Machining & Components in Peoria, IL
If a part is small, turned, and needs to be made fast and accurately, there is a good chance it is brass. In Peoria, brass fills the bins with fittings, valve components, fasteners, and electrical connectors, machined at high speed on screw machines and CNC lathes that exploit C360's legendary machinability. Choosing the grade is mostly about whether the part is machined, formed, or fighting corrosion.
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Why Brass Dominates High-Volume Turned Parts
Brass, a copper-zinc alloy, occupies a sweet spot that makes it one of the most economical materials to machine in volume. The headline property is machinability: free-machining brass cuts faster, with cleaner chips, better surface finish, and longer tool life than almost any other metal, which directly lowers the cost per part on turned components. For a Peoria shop running screw machines or CNC lathes, brass parts come off the machine quickly and accurately, which is why fittings, connectors, valve bodies, and small hardware are so often brass.
Beyond machinability, brass offers good corrosion resistance, useful in fluid-system and outdoor applications, plus moderate electrical conductivity that suits it for electrical terminals and connectors. It takes plating well, has a pleasant appearance, and resists the kind of general corrosion that would attack carbon steel. The combination of fast machining, decent corrosion resistance, and conductivity makes brass the natural choice for the high-count small parts that populate hydraulic, pneumatic, fuel, and electrical systems on heavy equipment.
Where brass does not belong is in high-strength structural roles, it is not as strong as steel, and in high-temperature service. It is a parts material for fittings, connectors, and components, not for frames or load-bearing structures. A Peoria buyer reaches for brass when the part is small, needs to be machined economically in quantity, and benefits from corrosion resistance or conductivity, which describes an enormous share of the fittings and hardware on any complex machine.
C360, C260, and Naval Brass: Picking the Grade
C360 is free-machining brass, the benchmark for machinability and the default for turned brass parts. Its small lead addition gives it the highest machinability rating of common metals (it is the 100-percent reference others are measured against), so it machines extremely fast with excellent finish and tool life. C360 is the grade for fittings, valve components, fasteners, and any part with significant machined features made in quantity. When a Peoria buyer needs a turned brass part and says nothing else, C360 is almost always the intent and the economical answer.
C260 is cartridge brass, the forming and drawing grade. It has higher zinc content and excellent ductility and cold-formability, so it draws, stamps, and forms into shapes that C360's lower ductility cannot handle, C360 is optimized for machining, not forming, and tends to crack if you try to deeply form it. C260 is the choice for stamped terminals, drawn shells, formed connectors, and sheet-metal brass parts. The tradeoff is machinability: C260 machines acceptably but nowhere near as freely as C360, so the grade choice follows the dominant process, machining points to C360 and forming points to C260.
Naval brass adds a small tin content to improve corrosion resistance, particularly resistance to dezincification and to seawater, where ordinary brasses can lose zinc and weaken. It is the choice for marine and corrosive-fluid applications where a standard brass would dezincify over time. For a Peoria part headed into seawater or an aggressive fluid environment, naval brass buys corrosion durability that C360 and C260 cannot match, at the cost of somewhat reduced machinability and higher price.
Machining Economics and Finishing Brass Parts
The reason brass dominates the bins of small parts is pure economics. On a screw machine or CNC lathe, C360 runs at high spindle speeds with clean chip formation and minimal tool wear, so the cost per part is low and the throughput is high. For a Peoria buyer needing thousands of fittings or connectors, brass on a multi-spindle screw machine is one of the most cost-effective ways to make precision turned parts. This is why the grade is so deeply entrenched in fluid-system and electrical hardware.
A technical note that matters for some applications is the lead content in free-machining brass like C360. The lead is what makes it machine so well, but for drinking-water and certain other regulated applications, low-lead or no-lead brass alternatives are required to meet safety standards. A buyer whose part contacts potable water or falls under lead-restriction regulations should specify a compliant low-lead grade rather than standard C360, and shops are familiar with these alternatives.
Finishing brass is usually about appearance, corrosion, or contact performance. Brass takes plating readily, nickel and chrome for appearance and added corrosion resistance, tin for solderable electrical contacts. It can be polished to a bright finish, and it naturally develops a patina over time that some applications want and others plate over. Deburring is important on machined brass fittings because the soft material throws fine burrs at cross-holes and threads that can interfere with sealing or assembly. Peoria shops handle these finishing and deburring steps, and specifying the finish and any thread or sealing requirements up front keeps the parts function-ready off the line.
Frequently Asked Questions
C360 free-machining brass is the benchmark against which the machinability of all other metals is measured, literally rated at 100 percent on the standard machinability scale, and the reason comes down to its composition and how it behaves under a cutting tool. C360 is a copper-zinc alloy with a small lead addition, and that lead is the key: it is essentially insoluble in the brass and exists as tiny dispersed particles throughout the material. When a cutting tool engages the metal, those lead particles act as internal lubricant and chip breakers, so instead of forming long, gummy, tangling chips the way pure copper does, the material breaks into small, clean chips that clear easily. The result is that C360 machines at very high spindle speeds with excellent surface finish, minimal cutting force, low tool wear, and tight, repeatable tolerances. For a shop running screw machines or CNC lathes, this translates directly into fast cycle times, long tool life, and low cost per part, which is exactly why fittings, valve components, fasteners, and connectors are so often made from C360. The one caveat is the lead content itself: for drinking-water and certain regulated applications, the lead makes standard C360 non-compliant, and you must specify a low-lead or no-lead alternative. But for the broad range of industrial fittings and hardware where lead is not a concern, C360's machinability makes it the economical default.
Specify C260 (cartridge brass) instead of C360 when your part's dominant manufacturing process is forming, drawing, or stamping rather than machining, because the two grades are optimized for opposite operations. C360 is free-machining brass designed to cut fast and clean, but that same composition, including its lead content and lower ductility, makes it relatively brittle when you try to deeply bend, draw, or form it; it will crack. C260 has higher zinc content and excellent ductility and cold-formability, so it can be drawn into shells, stamped into terminals, and formed into complex shapes without cracking, which C360 cannot do. So the rule is process-driven: if your part is primarily turned or machined with significant cutting operations, use C360 for its superior machinability; if your part is primarily formed, drawn, or stamped from sheet or strip, use C260 for its formability. The tradeoff is that C260 machines acceptably but nowhere near as freely as C360, so you do not want to use it for heavily machined parts where C360 would be far more economical. For parts that involve both forming and some machining, the dominant process usually decides, and a Peoria shop can advise based on the geometry. Describe how the part is made, and the grade follows naturally from whether machining or forming is the governing operation.
Dezincification is a specific corrosion failure mode that affects brass in certain environments, and it is the reason naval brass exists. Brass is a copper-zinc alloy, and in corrosive environments, particularly seawater, brackish water, and some aggressive fluids, the zinc can be selectively leached out of the alloy, a process called dezincification. As the zinc dissolves away, it leaves behind a porous, weak, copper-rich structure that looks intact on the surface but has lost much of its strength and can fail under pressure or load. This is a serious concern for brass fittings, valves, and components in marine or aggressive-fluid service, where a part can quietly degrade internally and then fail. Naval brass addresses this by adding a small amount of tin to the copper-zinc composition, which inhibits the dezincification process and substantially improves resistance to seawater corrosion. So you should specify naval brass instead of standard C360 or C260 when the part will be in seawater, brackish water, or another environment known to cause dezincification, especially for valves, fittings, and pressure-containing components where internal degradation would be dangerous. The tradeoffs are that naval brass machines somewhat less freely than C360 and costs more, so you reserve it for genuinely corrosive service rather than using it everywhere. If your brass part is headed into a marine or aggressive-fluid environment, tell the Peoria shop and they will confirm whether naval brass or another dezincification-resistant alloy is warranted.
Yes, and for any brass part that contacts potable water you generally must use a low-lead or no-lead compliant grade rather than standard C360, because of the regulations governing lead in drinking-water systems. The issue is that standard free-machining brass like C360 contains a small amount of lead, which is precisely what gives it its excellent machinability, but that lead can leach into water in contact with the part. Regulations, including federal lead-content requirements for plumbing and drinking-water components, restrict the allowable lead in wetted surfaces of such parts, and standard C360 does not meet those limits. To address this, the industry developed low-lead and no-lead brass alloys that replace most or all of the lead with other elements, often bismuth or silicon, that provide acceptable machinability while meeting the lead-content regulations. These compliant grades let you make potable-water fittings, valves, and components that machine reasonably well and pass the regulatory requirements. The tradeoff is that lead-free brasses typically do not machine quite as fast as C360 and can cost more, so you use them specifically where potable-water contact or lead regulations apply, not as a blanket substitute. When you source a brass part in Peoria that will contact drinking water, state that requirement explicitly in your RFQ so the shop quotes a compliant low-lead or no-lead grade and certifies compliance, rather than defaulting to standard C360 which would not be acceptable for that use.
Deburring is especially important on machined brass fittings because brass is a relatively soft material that readily throws fine burrs during machining, and on a fitting those burrs can interfere directly with the part's function. Whenever a drill or cutter breaks through a wall, crosses a hole, or finishes a thread, it tends to push up a thin ridge of material at the edge, and on brass these burrs form easily. On a fitting, that matters more than on many other parts because fittings have to seal and assemble: a burr at a cross-hole or at a thread can prevent a proper seal, allow leakage, cut an O-ring, contaminate a fluid system if it breaks loose, or simply make assembly difficult. So thorough deburring is part of making a functional brass fitting, not a cosmetic afterthought. Peoria shops handle deburring through several methods depending on the part: manual deburring for accessible edges, tumbling or vibratory finishing for batches of small parts to knock down edges uniformly, and specialized tools for cross-holes and internal passages where burrs are hardest to reach. For fluid-system parts, removing internal burrs from cross-drilled passages is critical and shops use dedicated processes for it. When you order machined brass fittings, specify the sealing and assembly requirements and any cleanliness needs so the shop applies the appropriate level of deburring, particularly for hydraulic, pneumatic, and fuel-system fittings where a loose burr or a sealing failure has real consequences.
Last updated: July 2026
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