# How Brake Calipers Are Made ## Метаданные - **Канал:** Donut - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTRgzDuFjNw - **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/44249 ## Транскрипт ### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) [] The brakes are some of the most important parts of your car, and it's the calipers that are running the show. Today, I'm at a brake parts manufacturer to find out how this becomes something that can stop anything from a Range Rover to a roller coaster. You might recognize the name Willwood as they've been making brake systems since the 70s. We're here at their headquarters in Camaro, California, where over 350 people make up the entire manufacturing process. But the journey of a brand new caliper is a bit more complicated than you might think. You do know you make the most important part of a car. — Yeah. You know, I and having been here long enough and used a lot of our products, I get it. — Yeah. I get it when people say that — cuz if you want to go fast, how do you stop that — and repeat it over and you have to have confidence. — For those of you who don't know the ins and out of the brake system, you might not understand just how important the calipers are. If your brake pads are what cause the friction with your rotors to bring your car to a halt, then your calipers are what squeeze it all together. It applies the pressure. Think of the caliper like the pieces of bread that hold together a sandwich. They house everything in place. And when you go to take a bite, they hold the sandwich together. And what's a sandwich without bread? It's salad. This level of importance is why when a new caliper is developed, it goes through a tedious process long before anything hits the production floor. And that happens here in the R&D department. First up, a vehicle with the desired platform for a new caliper is brought in. An engineer will then break down and measure the vehicle stock brake system. All right, so now the wheels off, what do we start with? All right. So, we'll start with what what's on their stock because we want to make an improvement from over the stock setup — naturally. — We're not trying to do anything crazy. make your truck perform like a race vehicle. We're trying to improve the stock braking. — Right. So, you measure exactly how it is as so that you have something to start off of. So, what's next? — All right. So, now that we've got the caliper off, uh we can start 3D scanning this because we want to know the offset of everything. You need to have the proper offset. — It needs to be a direct replacement for stock. So once the caliper comes off, they have to actually make sure uh the rotor is going to fit the new caliper as well. And then everything is based off that from there. Do you use like reference points or anything or do you just scan? You just go — Oh, well that's the magic of this thing. You just start scanning. Like — that's cool. — You'll sometimes you'll have to spray some like 3D scanning powder that you spray on it, but no, you can just start scanning. If you have issues with it, you can put target dots on it and everything, but typically it'll just pick everything up. It's pretty great. — That's awesome. Once the 3D scan has been made, the engineer begins designing the new caliper based off of the specs and parameters of the 3D scan. That design is then used to create a 3D printed test caliper. 3D models allow the R&D team to test fit a new caliper without wasting money on making fitment models out of actual aluminum. — So, this is our nice 3D print. We were able to put some threads in there. Lines up perfectly right there. — Okay. So, now that you have your 3D scan, model. So, your 3D model fits the rotor, fits the truck, everything's good. Uh, how do you go? Do you just make a final product now or is there more steps? — No, we want to prototype the part with actual aluminum because, you know, stuff changes between a piece of plastic and a big block of metal, right? So, we want to go and test that. So, we'll go to R&D shop over uh literally in the same building again — and they'll make a prototype for us and then we can test fit that and go run. — So, R&D has its own machine shop. That's correct. That's separate from production. — Yep. — In order not to tie up the main manufacturing floors, the R&D department has their own machining shop. This shop is made up of two main techs whose sole purpose is to build out anything the engineers can think of, but their expertise and knowledge of the craft or maybe their biggest contribution. So, how many prototypes would you say you go through before you get to a final prototype? — Typically, fingers crossed we do one prototype. — One and done. I'll say that they've gotten it down to a science where it's one prototype. — And one of the cool things about it is the same engineer also designs all the tooling. — So Enrique who did the machining on this caliber, he's also making the tooling for the fixtures to manufacture. — Enrique's been here for 35 years. — That's impressive. — So with Enrique, he kind of knows what to expect and he can also troubleshoot a lot of things and help out some of our new engineers like Luca before we get too deep into it. That's cool. So, once this prototype is created, uh, where are we going from there? — This prototype specifically will be bolted back onto our vehicle. We'll test it on, in this case, Mike's vehicle. And simultaneously, I'll be working on the dyno where we have this nice brake dyno. We can test pad compounds and see what performs the best. — There's a dyno for brakes. — Yeah. A brake dyno. Yep. Okay. ### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00] — Some people just know they could save hundreds on car insurance by checking Allstate first. Like you know to check your spare tire first before taking a road trip. — Oh yeah, we got a flat. — Oh man. — That's all right. That's why I have a spare. spare for my spare. — Oh man. — That's okay. That's why I have a backup for my spare. Oh man. — It's okay. That's why you have a backup for your spare. Spare. — That'll work. — Yes. — Checking first is smart. — Well, now we got a different problem. — So, check All State first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with All State. Yes, you heard that right. A brake dyno. But unlike an engine dyno that measures torque and power over time, this dyno measures how much torque and power you can stop over and over again. So this is the brake dyno. It all outputs through this shaft right here and it spins this brake rotor and we'll attach our brake caliper and we'll mount it to this headstock like a lathe. You have this big headstock you can adjust. You can tune the how much weight you're doing, how much torque and it it's a very complex machine. Uh, so it just has a capability. You dial in said capability of the expectations you're looking for out of the caliper and then you just spin it and run it — pretty much. Yeah. And you'll clamp it at different forces and that's kind of what tells you how good or bad the pad is and with this combination. So, — okay. So, what specific information are you looking for out of set dyno? Because normally an engine you're like how much torque, how much horsepower and then done. So, this is the opposite. This is how much torque horsepower can you throw at it and then stop it, — right? And you'll get this what engineers like to call is a mew number for the brake pad. And with that, you can do some math and figure out how good the brake pad is at different temperatures. — Meu number like the Pokémon Mew. — No, the the Greek letter mu. — STUPID. STUPID. — OKAY. — RIGHT. So now when I tell you my expectations for what this thing could do were blown away, I'm not being dramatic. This is cool. — I'm looking at this temperature here and I'm also looking at the pressure. If we go past 1300 PSI, it's far too far. — That's where the caliper starts exploding. It's already up to 300°. — So, brake pads just spark apparently. — Yeah. Huh. Oh. Oh, there's fire. It's on fire. — It's doing a 95 mph stop. — We got a consistent fire here. — Uh a consistent orange rotor. Uh but now it's just going to spin until it cools off. Okay. So now the air is circulating. So normally you would run the air so that doesn't happen. when you're driving, there's air flowing through everything, so that would naturally cool you off. Uh, and if you have air ducting or anything like that going straight to the rotor, that would also cool it off. But in this test, this is extreme extreme. — Now that the new caliber design has been put through its paces, it can officially move onto the floor where machine techs pump out literally thousands of new caliber sets every day. So this is a net forging which is essentially the rawest form of the base product. — Absolutely. And what this has started off as is literally a chunk of billet. — Uhhuh. — Then it's smashed — right — and forged into this shape. And you can see the parting line from where the two dyes are. — When you buy something made out of aluminum, you'll typically come across one of these three types of production. Cast, billet, or forged. Think of these as trim levels. Casting is the cheapest way to manipulate aluminum and is typically used in mass production due to its quick turnaround. What makes it weak is its porous or random grain structure. This doesn't necessarily make casting bad. In the right application, a cast product is more than strong enough for the job. Billet is the second strongest way to shape aluminum. And unlike forging, the metal is cut from a raw block and then machined into whatever shape is needed. Now, in an application as important as stopping race cars over and over at 100 plus mph, you need the strongest and lightest material possible, and the forging process takes it to the next level. Forging is where aluminum is heated and pressed into the desired shape. This process aligns the metal's grain structure and makes it more dense, almost like how the daema panels in our bulletproof episode are made stronger by being pressed and bonded together. ### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00] — This is the start. And right now, this same inboard body and outboard for that fact, — they'll make up to about 70 different calipers right now. — So, 70 different applications starting from this one singular piece almost like a Lego. The piece of resistance. — In a day, we probably manufacture up to 2500. — 2500 full sets. Yep. — They're making 2500 of these a day. And you guys use humans for all of this. It's not automated in any way. They program the machines, they load the machines, they do all the hand deburring, the finishing, which we'll see later. Uh all is done by hand. That's incredible. — Now, the thing that everybody always trips out on before and after. — Yeah. — Oh, wow. And this is aluminum. And I feel a huge weight difference. Uh that's pretty significant. But imagine if it was a chunk of aluminum, how much chunk, super wasteful. — We'd have so much waste. — Yeah, this is a very efficient process. And efficiency is key. And that's how you save money and you save the world. And a lot of the process we've seen on this show so far, there's tons of aluminum waste. And usually that goes out to some other company that recycles it, remelts it, reforges it, everything. But since you guys are mass producing, what do you do in that situation? Because you have tons and tons of chips every day. — We have a team of at least two guys — each shift that do nothing but the maintenance on machine. — So checking fluids, making sure the machines are running efficiently, — and then they're also turning chips into pellets. — So you send this back to whoever does your uh forging stuff, correct? — And then they just reuse it. People have to realize that you don't get 100% of that recycling. By the time that they heat it up, — a lot of it is burned off, right? You have to look at the entire process when you're manufacturing at a large quantity. — When you're manufacturing thousands of parts a day, Mike is right on the money. Efficiency comes from looking at the whole process. And once a caliper moves over to building two, the level of efficiency only goes up along with the amount of hands. — Caliper bodies. The next step is going to be the type three uh anodize that we do in-house. — You might remember anodizing as that super colorful finishing option for almost anything made of aluminum in the 2000s, but here the anodizing process is all about protection. To put it simply, the machined calipers are dipped into an assortment of electrified baths containing elements like alkaline cleaners, lie, sulfuric acid, and deionized water. The reaction that takes place throughout this process creates a protective layer over the aluminum that acts primarily as a rust and scratch guard. This is just one more step that Willwood takes to ensure these calipers can take a beating. — What's crazy is that's clear. — Yeah. — But because it's so much more dense, it doesn't refract. — Okay. — So that it looks dark. — Okay. What I'm noticing in your process is you don't cover the mating surfaces in this step. Does that not affect the mating surfaces of the caliper itself? — As far as this process, it's an even amount because it's electronically charged. So, it's the same amount across that whole face where the two calipers match, — right? Anodizing this way is so uh accurate and you know exactly how much is coming off it. So, you don't have to worry about that. — N it's always the same amount. — That's pretty incredible. — The majority of the calipers that we use for the street go straight from here over to powder coat. We've now got a whole crew that is designated just to the powder coating process and it starts with masking off everything that needs to be masked off. — Okay, — this is the surface that we mask off so that when both body halves go together, it's completely flush. — Then you can see all of the different areas like the piston that we don't powder coat. We even do where the part number of the caliper is — so that stays open. tape them up, then they come out. And today they they're shooting black powder coat. Black and red is going to be what you find on the shelf. Then we have a night crew that does specialty colors up to 28 different colors. Okay. — And they'll do those in the evening. This is in its powder stage. So it's been charged onto the part electronically, — but once it goes into the oven and it comes out, it comes out like these calipers over here, that gloss finish. — Okay. So, we've gone in, we've gotten anodized, we've gotten mask, we've gotten the powder. Now, it's glossy and they're taking the masking off. — So, we're demasking. — And that's it. That is an assembly line. Once the calipers have been powder coated, they are branded either by screen printing or laser engraving ### Segment 4 (15:00 - 16:00) [15:00] depending on their eventual application. From here, the kits go to the assembly floor where dozens of workers put together the final caliber kits while also acting as the final step of quality control before a part is put on the shelves to weigh its destiny. Everything is tested right here, — put on the shelf, ready to ship. — Absolutely. — Wow. Mass manufacturing like what Willwood is doing is in many ways a dying breed. The automation of the manufacturing world has put so many people out of work and taken the human element out of so many of the parts we use along with it. Craft is a human trait. So the fact that every part of these calipers production has had a person behind it is not only really cool, but it's important. It doesn't take just one department. takes all of us as a community to make sure that we're getting the best product to the customer with the least amount of issues. And if we didn't have everybody working in unison like we did today, we would not be able to get the level of craftsmanship and pride that the entire company feels. Safe to say they work. Thank you guys so much for watching and thank you everyone over at Willwood for letting us tour their facility. It's amazing to see a mass manufacturer still have so many human hands still operating the place. And if you guys enjoy my brand new show this to that, let your friends know. You need to like and subscribe because I can't do it unless you do that. Thank you guys so much. If there's something you want us to watch get made and show you, make sure you let us know down in the comments so that we can reach out to all the companies worldwide to see what they got going on. Uh well, that's it. Bye. — If you like this video, you should probably check out the next one. Come on, you know you want to.