EuroBrake 2024: Prima Additive's sustainable technologies for brake disc coating on display in Mainz (2024)

Why would a company that produces additive manufacturing systems exhibit at a trade show dedicated to brakes?

The reason is simple, and it is part of a European regulation that will come into force in the next few years. In fact, with the advent of the Euro 7 anti-pollution regulation, the braking systems of vehicles registered in the European Union will have to be "greener". This is because approximately 20% of the pollution produced by combustion vehicles comes from the brakes, which with their wear release polluting particles into the atmosphere in the form of PM10 with each braking. The Euro7 regulation proposes a holistic approach, which aims to reduce vehicle pollution by optimizing every part of the vehicle, including the brakes. The solution to creating less polluting brakes is, therefore, to make the discs more resistant, coating the traditional cast iron brake disc with two layers of more resistant metal. In this way, it is estimated that it is possible to reduce PM10 emissions from the braking system by approximately 90%.

Prima Additive, thanks to its experience in laser systems for additive manufacturing, has developed the Rapid Coating process, which in just a few seconds allows the two faces of a brake disc to be coated with two layers between 100 and 250 microns, the first made of steel and the second composed of a mix of steel and titanium or tungsten carbides.

Rapid Coating (RC) is a high-speed laser cladding technology derived from traditional DED, used to quickly cover a metal component with a thin layer of metal powder. The innovative idea, which allows this process to be carried out in a very short time, is to shorten the time taken to completely melt the substrate, leaving it to melt only partially and melting most of the powder in flight during the transition through the laser beam. This is possible by defocusing the powder spot relative to the substrate.

Prima Additive's contribution is not limited to the development of technology: in fact, the Italian company has developed a fully automated solution, based on its IANUS robotic cell, capable of producing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week thanks to a of loading/unloading automation system combined with a centralized and highly efficient powder management system, which allows you to feed all the machines in a plant with a single system and, above all, to recover the powders to be able to reintroduce them into the process and reuse them.

Furthermore, Prima Additive can supply, and has already supplied, companies in the automotive industry complete lines capable of starting from the raw cast iron brake disc, carrying out the coating, grinding, process monitoring, and all other operations, to arrive at the end of a fully automated production line with the brake disc finished, coated, ground, and ready to be used.

The development of this technology is further testimony to the sustainability of additive manufacturing, which is a green technology not only for the benefits that are usually cited but also as an enabler of sustainable applications.

Furthermore, this type of application will be one of the first to see a technology derived from Direct Energy Deposition (also known as Laser Metal Deposition) used on a very large scale, given that every vehicle in circulation after the entry into force of the Euro 7 regulation will have to have the discs coated with this technology. This, we are sure, will lead to significant growth in additive technologies, favored by the economies of scale that will be generated in the coming years.

Prima Additive's experts will therefore be available to sector operators during the three days of the EuroBrake trade show in Mainz, to exhibit the technological innovations present in its turnkey solutions for Rapid Coating.

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