Coating metal drag washers.

[Shiftee]

I had an idea and wonder what you guys think. I'm currently in the process of refinshing/refurbishing my 113hlw and 114hlw. In that process I'm already planning to cerakote the majority of the reels and I've pondered coating my metals with cerakote's microslick. It's typically used on firearm bolts and such as a dry film lubricant. My thoughts are that it's proven to be incredibly durable in my firearms, at .1-.05 mil thick it's not really going to add much in the way of thickness, it's ceramic based so it should help dissipate heat, it's a great corrosive inhibitor, I could see it reducing wear on carbon washers and I would think it would make for incredibly smooth drag. Thoughts?
Product Data Sheet
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/74759557/SOC%29AlanTani/C-110%20Micro%20Slick%20Product%20Data%20Sheet.pdf

http://www.cerakoteguncoatings.com/finishes/C-110Q/micro-slick-dry-film-coating/

[Dominick]

Hey Shiftee, the probable best way to answer this question is that you experiment with the ceracoat and report here.  Where do you live?  If you live near San Mateo, CA I would help.  Dominick

[Shark Hunter]

Hey Shiftee!
I'm familiar with cerakote, but I don't think I would use it on the drags. There needs to be a certain amount of friction for the drag to work properly.
It reminds me of when I was into dirt bikes and four wheelers. I had one with an automatic clutch. I put the latest space age lubricant in the oil and it fried the wet clutch system. Too slippery. I may be wrong here buddy, but just my two cents.
Experimenting is what its all about here.

[Keta]

#1, Try it and see
#2, Drags work on friction, I've tested smooth and roughed up washers and could not tell the difference but too smooth might not be a good thing.

I would bet it is not a good idea but I've been wrong more than once in my life.

[alantani]

personally, wouldn't bother.  it should be fine without. 

[Alto Mare]

Are we having problems with the stainless steel washers? i haven't seen any

[Keta]

Are we having problems with the stainless steel washers? i haven't seen any

I haven't either but failure is part of R&D.

[Tightlines667]

#1, Try it and see
#2, Drags work on friction, I've tested smooth and roughed up washers and could not tell the difference but too smooth might not be a good thing.

I would bet it is not a good idea but I've been wrong more than once in my life.

Sorry Lee but I might have to respectfully dissagree here.  I think in order to have the smoothest possible drag, you want the metal washer(s) that the Greased weaves carbon fiber washers are operating on to:

1)be perfectly flat, round, and hard/ridgid
2)be perfectly smooth, polished is better then dull, no gouging/mating, scratches or pockets.  I think less unevenness even on a microscopic level will provide less startup friction or and friction related to acceleration/deceleration or increases/decreases in applied force between the surfaces.
3)have both surfaces' coefficient of friction remain relatively constant with changes in heat.  

For all of these reasons, I kinda think a ceramic or ceramic coated drag plate/or replacement metal washers would make for an ultrasmooth drag system.  If it gets too slick you might lose a little max drag though.  Not saying I'm right here but it would be cool to try to borrow a page out of the high end aircraft breaks engineering book, and apply this technology to fishing reels.  Not sure what the cost considerations here would be though.  Add electromagnets and now we are talking high end controllable breaking.

Might be interesting to test out some different coatings.  Not sure if a Tefon or Ceramic type coating would be too slick?  This is not my area of expertise.

[Keta]

I hand hone my personal metal washers then polish them.  When I was playing around I put a light contour on a few sets to see if it increased the drag, if it did I could not tell so I polish them all now.

[Shiftee]

Dominick, I'm in NC. You're welcome to swing by and help but I guess you'd have to pack a suitcase. On the upside I only live a couple miles from the airport, my old lady cooks a mean meatloaf and there's plenty of beer in the fridge. Just pack a respirator because cerakote is a pretty harsh chemical and I've only got one.

No Alto, not having any problems with the stainless. I guess you could say I'm just the tinkering type and not really one to leave well enough alone.  Cerakote's microslick has some interesting properties and the bottle was sitting on my workbench the other night when I was stripping down the 113hlw. I had the washers in my hand, looked up and saw the microslick--- next thing I know the hamster that lives in my head had jumped on his wheel.

Tightlines, I like where your head is at, that's kinda the direction my hamster was running too.

I think it may be worth an experiment, worst case is I have to swap the metals back out. I'm by no means a drag scientist like many of you are but from my limited experience heat is an issue of concern with any drag system. I'd think the ceramic would provide a substantial reduction in thermal impact. If the result is hypothetically a lb or two loss in max drag yet the results yield a massive heat reduction wouldn't that still be a win? Thinking about the how smooth is too smooth aspect, I keep thinking about a clutch and flywheel. Heat rash, uneven wear, any slight warping of the flywheel surface - essentially any imperfection in the flywheels surface and the result is driveline vibration, uneven wear and premature failure. Doesn't a star drag system essentially function like multiple carbon clutches against multiple flywheels/metal washers? There's definitely a little bit of a difference in clutch material vs the carbon fiber of a drag washer and I may be out in left field here but I tend to think smoother would be better.

Shark Hunter I hear ya though, sometimes over improving breaks the wheel. Haha but on the other hand if my hair brained idea yields some positive results I imagine you wouldn't turn down a massive heat reduction when you set a 20/0 on a 13' freight train from the beach and that bad boy heads for blue water.

Thanks for the input guys. I have tremendous respect for the knowledge here and put my learning cap on every time I visit the site. May take me a couple weeks to get to it but I'll post up some results when I do.

[Tiddlerbasher]

Shiftee, tribology is a weird science! I found, through experimenting, that 2 materials (kevlar and carbon fibre) although capable of producing the same amount of drag did not run at similar temperatures The kevlar ran much lower temps for a given drag. Simple science would suggest that the same friction (drag) would produce similar temps - not so in the real world
We can only try - sometimes failing but still learning Keep us posted with your experiments.

[Alto Mare]

Well said Tiddlerbasher . If it works or fails, it would teach us just the same .

Shiftee, it would be nice to have you give this a try for us, I like people that enjoy experimenting, I enjoy it myself every once in a while .

I was also working on a little project about reducing heat build up.
Check here from page 9:
http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=6517.msg65563#msg65563

I would like our next run of custom stainless steel gears from Prochallenger to be similar to the Fathom...as these:

I'm currently having discussions with Alan Chui ( Black Pearl), about these drilled gears and custom drilled stainless steel washers as I'm
showing here:

Don't look too closely at the drilled holes, those are done free hand, just for testing .
I strongly believe in this layout and I'm hoping that it will happen it the future.

Keep your wheels turning, the law of physics has been broken a few times before .

Sal

[Tiddlerbasher]

My wheels are still turning but the hampster has left the building

[Jeri]

Hi  guys,

Just a few more items to put into the 'melting pot' on this subject.

Back when motor bikes first started to have disc brakes, the theme was to have a stainless steel disc – smooth and polished (mechanically – not chemically). Then, the British and Italian manufacturers fitted cast iron discs – smooth and polished, as they found they got better braking in wet conditions as well as dry, possibly due to the microscopic surface texture of the cast iron. This was shunned by the larger Japanese manufactures of the time, as being unsightly due to rusting, despite the fact that it worked well.

At the time I moved into racing bikes, and all sorts of combinations were tried to improve all round performance of braking with discs. Holes were drilled in radial or spiral patterns in both stainless steel and cast iron discs, and probably still at that time, best all round performance was from cast iron – drilled or plain. The principle behind the drilling operations was to have a location where the surface water could be cleared away from the main braking surface – but generally the holes were quite small when compared to the main braking surface. There were even trials of radial slots cut into the surface, or even all the way through – though that didn't last long.

Currently, the technology has advanced to the point where at top level racing now, carbon discs are used for dry weather, while stainless steel (undrilled) are used for wet weather set ups.

Two points here – obviously I haven't mentioned the huge strides forward in the development of brake pad materials used or the hydraulic callipers. Additionally, as this example is on a motor bike, there are other factors in the development like weight, etc. That have influenced some of this development.

However, at the end of the day, after some 35+ years of serious development, we are back to the point where it all started – stainless steel – plain undrilled.

With our application the aspects of surface area, surface flatness, heat dissipation, and obviously pressure are all hugely contributory factors. We see this in the difference between lever drag reels and star drag, immediately in the overall surface area having a huge effect on the overall braking capacity of any given reel. This is why there are improvements when we can increase the numbers of friction plates in some star drag reels – yet still these star drag reels struggle to compete with a single layer of disc materials found in a lever drag.

Personally, at this time I think that technology is at the point where plain stainless is working best for a number of reasons, and heat dissipation is one of the big factors as well as surface flatness. I never have to fine tune my lever drag discs, whether dry or greased. The only fine tuning I usually have to do, is surface grinding the lips off the discs in a star drag reel, as they are all just basically pressings, and inevitably lose flatness in that process; and it is noticeable in the improved performance.

I think that coating the disc plates with some other material is going to yield some odd results – potentially a loss of heat dissipation, and maybe to a degree surface texture. A chemical application will probably be quite smooth when compared to the textured surface of a mechanically ground disc plate. At this point I would try and relate it to the discs we have in lever drag reels, and the relative expense the manufacturers go to, to achieve this finish and hence performance benefits. Polished mirror finish one side for heat dissipation (reflection and conduction into the air), and mechanically ground flat for the braking surface – which in itself has a surface texture.

A question to bring to the table might be whether milled cast iron discs might improve performance in a star drag – though obviously rusting might well be an issue in wet environments?? There we are – back to machined stainless steel!!!

Just my thoughts.

Cheers from sunny Africa


Jeri

[Alto Mare]

Hello Jeri, good or bad I always enjoy your statements. On the Fathom's stainless steel gears, are you saying that having the bottom solid would be better than drilled?
On the keyed washers, have you looked at my post where I tested the drilled washers compared to the solid ones while using a heat sensor gun?
the numbers were much lower with the drilled washers. This isn't about air venting through the washers, that would be hard to do, this is about having less material while maintaining the same size surface for the carbon washer to rotate on. I believe drilled metal washers cool down much faster than solid ones, just like the heat shield on a AR.
I know my tests are primitive, but they could get to the point at times.
I've been in construction for over 40 years, prior of working for myself, I was a foremen for 15 years, having a crew of ten men. We've built schools, town houses, warehouses and more, we've corrected structural engineers a few times. What I'm saying is, you can't always go by the book.
The best solution would be to the reel itself tell us how its doing.
All the best Jeri.
Sal


Shiftee, sorry for pulling away from your original post, at times you add a little something and it expands.
I'm still learning on how to move things around here, if I could I will move my comments to my thread.
Please proceed with your coating on the washers, I'm anxious to see how you make out.
Thanks for trying this for us.

Sal