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Ever wondered what actually goes into making your bike? How do they put the little ramps on a cassette? How do they make handlebars thinner in certain places? How long does it take to make a chain? Well we do too! For those of you who need to know - we thought a little insight into one of newest products might be interesting.
The Vented rotor as used on the Moto V2 brakeset is an advanced product, taking motorcycle and automotive technology and creating something unique in the MTB market.
The thinking behind the rotor is cooling and consistency of braking. When a pad is pushed against a steel braking surface, friction is obviously created and this generates heat. LOTS of it! If you imagine riding your favourite long descent, think about the number of times you apply the brakes and/or come to a stop. The braking surface, pads, pistons, caliper and fluid are all heating up and cooling down. Sometimes this can be in quick succession so temperatures vary greatly, sometimes you may not brake heavily for a few minutes. Throw into the equation water being sprayed onto the rotor (or actually submerged!) and making a hot brake cool rapidly, air temperature and riding style (some people unnecessarily drag brakes just by covering the levers and this causes lots of residual heat) the brake has a lot of unstable characteristics to deal with.
This is where the Vented rotor comes in. By actually 'venting' the centre of the rotor (see picture) two extra surfaces are created which work as heat syncs and allow heat to be disipated more quickly and with air flowing into the centre of the rotor this allows further cooling. With all this air and surface area the rotor can stay cooler than a standard rotor and because the ultimate temperatures achieved are lower - a more consistent feel at the lever is felt, as the fluid is not expanding when it gets hot and causing the lever travel to change.
Enough of the technical stuff! What results is an on average 15% cooler running rotor. With temperatures on a disc surface and pads reaching 300+ deg C this is a huge performance advantage.
Here's a step by step process of how the Vented rotor is brought to life:
[1] Laser cut outer disc
[2] Laser cut inner vented disc
[3] Laser cut inner disc
[4] Hand finish all 3 parts
[5] Vapour blast all surfaces to clean
[6] Apply braze to disc
[7] Assemble on special heat resistant graphite fixtures
[8] Brazed and heat treated in vacuum furnace
[9] Grind pad surfaces of disc
[10] Mill outer diameter
[11] Chamfer mill outer of disc diameter
[12] Mill spider location
[13] Laser cut aluminium spider
[14] Mill aluminium spider
[15] Barrel and polish spider
[16] Anodise spider
[17] Turn rivets
[18] Rivet spider into disc
[19] Laser mark spider
[20] Quality control inspection
Within these key processes there are a number of other procedures that take place. The time involved in making a rotor can be estimated at 40 minutes (not including anodising which for black takes 2 hours!) Add to this the time taken between processes and handling between stations and each rotor is nearing the hour mark!
Obviously with the way the processes are handled and the time it takes to produce the parts on mass the actual production time is reduced, but it is still a time consuming process.
So there you have it - and you just thought we put them in a box and shipped them out?!
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