We get calls every day with engineers and researchers looking to replace some nylon mesh or filtration screening in an application or apparatus. Unfortunately many users do not know what size mesh they actually have and some do not know if it is nylon mesh or polyester mesh. Determining the material is more difficult and the specific application can narrow that down. But determining the size is the challenge. Our mesh is monofilament woven mesh with a plain weave. We won’t get into this, but this is typically what you will find. When someone wants to know the size of the mesh, they are typically referring to the opening size. This is the size of the opening that will determine what will pass through and what will be filtered out. It would be nice to just measure this, but 100 microns is right at 0.004″ so measuring with any real degree of accuracy is not a suitable course of action.
Enter the “mesh count”. The mesh count is basically the number of threads, or openings, per inch. While this can still be challenging, the trick here is to realize that you will never get it exactly right. for example, if you count 50 threads in 1/2 inch it would be safe to double that to get a thread count of 100. The reason is that when you go to our chart you will find coma mesh sizes with a mesh count close to 100, but you will typically not find an exact match. That is ok, you are just trying to narrow it down. This exercise will narrow your search down to probably less than six sizes. Also remember that a sheet of standard copy paper is about 100 microns thick, so 10 to 20 microns one way or another will not impact most applications. If your application has specific sizes and is it critical to match what you are currently using, please contact us and let us work with you to determine the size nylon mesh.