I have recently met an engineer who accidently came across an aluminum alloy that is self lubricating, disapates heat and will never wear out. He has used this alloy to make his own brake rotors and has used these rotors for ten years on his daily driven car without changing brake pads and they have yet to wear out.

I talked to him about possibly making apex seals and he said that it would be no problem to cast the seals out of this aluminum alloy, but I am wondering if this alloy is too hard and could possibly "eat" the rotor housing away.

I am planning to get him to cast me a few sets so I can build a turbo motor and an N/A motor just so I can try these seals to see how they stand up.



Any input on this subject would help.



Thanks

Joe

 

How are you going to obtain the Sealing Surface finish? Casting IS NOT smooth enough. If this material is so hard, how will you obtain the final dimesional tolerances required?

 

no doubt^^ what he said....



Machine a rough blank, lap it, then polish it to final tolerance required. Know what the material is?? Sounds like ubotanium...LOL

 

it might work for side seals, but they dont really wear anyways

 

Metal Matrix Aluminum? aka Duralcan which is a trademark licenced to Alcan. That stuff is super hard, in billet form if you were to make anything it needs to be water jet cut as it dulls any metal/carbon blade in a few passes. I think if you were to try to make those into seals you would kill the metal ring that the rotor housings have. I doubt you could get it to work as the thermal expansion may be greatly different than what steel alloy seals are made from.

 

I'd question lubrication specs and expansion specs.

These are the two most important specs for apex seals.





-Ted

 

Good Luck with that.

 

This alloy sounds good for housings/plates material

 

I've never heard of a self-lubricating Al material.

Al by itself is pretty "abrasive" and galls with most irons and steels.

I'd be interested if this is for real or some fantasy?





-Ted

 

I will have to talk to him again about this, but he said that this aluminum alloy is inprenated with graphite, which makes it hard. As for it the sealing surface finish, yes you are right casting does make a very rough surface, so what he was planning on doing was to cast a sheet of this material about 3-4mm thick and then machine both sides down to 2mm (the width of normal apex seals) so that it is avery smooth surface. Once we have a sheet of 2mm metal, use a cnc machine to cut out the shape of the apex seal and then round the top sealing surface.



Please tell me if any of what I just wrote made any sense. I'm not very good at explaning things.



Thanks