PureForge, a California-based automotive materials technology company, claims that their Atomic-Forged technology could be the secret to reducing brake fleet maintenance costs in the light duty and heavy commercial fleet markets. Founded in early 2006, the company contends that their patented technology reduces rotor wear – and in some cases actually has eliminated rotor wear, leading to reduced fleet maintenance costs and lower levels of toxic brake dust.
The company has been exclusively selling their unique brake products into the law-enforcement fleet market, but recently expanded their efforts into the class 5-8 commercial fleet market. Commercial fleet vehicles are high consumers of brake rotors, as they typically run at nearly 50-percent to 75-percent of load capacity with frequent stopping. In particular, refuse hauling and metropolitan transit applications could be amongst the first fleets to benefit from a transition to PureForge’s Atomic-Forged technology.
Along with this expanded focus, the company appointed seasoned truck brake industry veteran Walter Frankiewicz to lead the charge. With the recent changes to the federal stopping distance requirements for heavy trucks and the significantly increased use of disc brakes in the industry, the company felt that Frankiewicz was not only perfectly positioned, but essential to help introduce the technology to the heavy commercial vehicles (classes 5-8). With 32 years of industry experience—half as a brake design and systems engineer at Bendix and half as the leader at a number of key companies including Rockwell-Meritor Brake Systems, Alcoa, Benteler and Bendix Spicer Foundation Brake—Frankiewicz took the helm as the CEO of this small, but potent brake manufacturer in January 2014. He immediately began to steer the ship, albeit in another direction from its prior course. Realizing the significant cost of brake service being a nemesis for the class 5-8 trucking industry, Frankiewicz immediately set about changing the strategic charge of the company to encompass large commercial vehicles in addition to the smaller, yet highly demanding law-enforcement vehicle fleets.
“PureForge is embarking on a new chapter in the company’s history of growth,” Frankiewicz says. “We are adapting our proprietary processing and intellectual property portfolio to the unique needs of the heavy commercial fleet market. Our goal is to provide a significant improvement in the brake rotor wear characteristics that can generate a payback in approximately two years for the fleet. Obviously, commercial fleets with high brake maintenance costs, such as refuse and transit, are ideal candidates for our technology and will benefit the most.”
Significantly Reduced Rotor Wear
The biggest enemy of a typical rotor is friction, which results in wear. PureForge’s proprietary Atomic-Forged rotors utilize revolutionary frictional properties that improve braking safety and performance, while significantly arresting wear. The secret is the company’s Atomic-Forged technology, a complex metallurgical process that changes the molecular nature of the brake rotor to make it stronger. By modifying the surface of a brake rotor at the molecular level, the end result is a multi-layer, ultra-dense exotic metal matrix that is forged directly onto the surface of the rotor. The entire process is computer controlled, robust and highly scalable.
Reduced Toxic Brake Dust
With reduced rotor wear comes the added benefit of less brake-dust emissions. Many areas of the United States are catching up to other nations and are now focused on improving the quality of their wastewater and air-born pollution. This has led to a regulatory focus on brake dust. Legislatures in the states of California, Washington and Rhode Island have all elevated the concern of brake-dust emissions to the critical level.
An estimated 50-80 tons of brake dust makes its way into the streams, earth, air and animal tissue per year from just one transit fleet with 500 vehicles utilizing disc brakes. Any reduction in brake wear that can reduce this process will benefit the community with cleaner run-off waters and less environmental contamination from the brakes. Extrapolating this single hypothetical transit fleet to multiple transit fleets, refuse hauling fleets, construction equipment and bulk equipment, one can quickly see why the amount of brake dust contributed by the unnecessary wear of brakes is a monumental concern that must be curtailed.
“PureForge envisions a brake rotor system that simply has zero negative impact on the environment,” supports PureForge founder and CTO, Nathan K. Meckel. “Our rotor manufacturing process has been engineered to be environmentally clean and can be deployed anywhere in the world.”
What’s Next
Currently, PureForge is conducting an extensive evaluation to validate the company’s transition into class 5-8 commercial vehicles. This evaluation includes dynamometer laboratory performance, life testing and other field-testing with heavy vehicle fleets. Amongst their first field tests is a large transit fleet based on the West Coast. Next up, the company has targeted waste-hauling fleets for evaluation and has school buses in its sights. In parallel, the company is accumulating dynamometer data to validate their claims of longer life, less wear and ultimately lower cost of ownership by curtailing related maintenance costs.
As many fleets face elevated maintenance costs and legislation begins to demand reduced brake pollutants, PureForge believes that their products are well timed to address the industry’s needs. With production capability largely already installed, it is possible that early adopters of the technology will be able to acquire the Atomic-Forged rotors within the 2015 timeframe.
“We aren’t stopping with fleets,” Frankiewicz continues. “We know that anywhere there is metal-on-metal wear, PureForge has the technology that can improve the operating performance and reduce the maintenance costs associated with that wear. We see many markets and applications that can benefit from Atomic-Forged technology, from brakes in other automotive applications (cars, trucks, personal sport vehicles, high-performance racing) to aerospace, military and other consumer markets.”
But first, the company intends to demonstrate the virtues of this game-changing technology where it feels the highest demand exists—in the heavy commercial vehicle market.
