I just had a friend come by my shop. He was telling me about a process that is great for rotors and others metals.Some one told him about the process last night at the races after he had a rotor break.So my question does it work?? Snake oil?? If it works is it worth the money?? This guy uses his brakes to set the chassis before entering the corners. He always has a red glowing rotor. THANK YOU for any help or assistance..Bobby..
It does work for certain applications. We saw a definate improvement in service life, but the cost difference made it a break even deal.
Process uses subzero temps for extended time to treat metal parts. I'm familiar with it used on carbide cutting tools. Parts are harder on surface but no more brittle. As was said, service life is increased. Will extend wear surface on rotor but from what I know, it won't make it less likely to break. Bob
check out www.performancecryogenics.com there is an explaination there. Performance Cryogenics Deep Cryogenic Tempering Service 916-434-6978
A lot of the drag racers I grew up with,always packed thier rear axles in dry ice for a few days. And they never broke one either Coincidence? I don't think so. Sparky
When I belonged to the AWS (American Welding Society) I heard a lecture on Cryogenics and it was quite interesting. He showed some real world examples so I'm sure it works. Depends a lot on what you're doing, though. If you have a very expensive metal part that's prone to wear, I'd say go for it. If you want to extend the life of some $25 brake rotors, probably not worth it.
One of the shops I did work in,used this process a lot.We ran a lot of huge stamping dies, that had a lot of very exspensive and large form blocks and other tooling, in them, that was subject to a lot of gaulding and pressure, due to the speeds, the dies were ran.The set up they had was a small chest type freezer set up, about 3' x 3' .Attached to this was a gage set up for two very large liquid nitrogen tanks.Also on the freezer was a digital timer/controller.The process involves slowly lowering the temp. of the parts to be treated to minus 300 degrees temp, over a long period of time,with the liquid nitrogen, around 12 hours and then holding the temp there, and then slowly return them to room temps. The process usally took around 24 hours to do. This process is supposed to make the surface of the parts, much tougher and less likely to gauld,chip or wear, than a normally heat treated part. My view on this is , on some parts we noticed a big increase in the life of the part, others, about the same as normal or maybe slightly better. Probably not a process for the average guy unless, you have contacts of people who can do it or have a part that continually wears out and is costly to replace. On the believe it or not side, some of the guys started trying the process on thier cheap disposable razor blades.When they did a job and had room, they tossed this stuff in and they swore it made the razors last much longer.
Just a sidenote, on NASCAR today they said a brake job cost between 25K-30K. Maybe this is the treatment they use? But still had a rotor break?......OLDBEET
I'm olmost possitive BigCheif on here has his hand in Cryogenics.. I can't remember if there shop does it or not now, i'm drawing a blank....i think they do though. I'll send him an e-mail and find out for sure....
I know a lot of professional rock crawlers do axles in cyrogenics. CTM U-Joints are done this way and I understand they will do other parts for a fee. But I agree with Squablow's comments.
Joe Mondello, the Oldsmobile guy, offers freeze treating on a lot of the hard parts he sells. http://www.mondellotwister.com/edelhds.html Looks like $300 for a set of heads. He does rods and cranks to.
That really works, that's one of the things the cryo guy demonstrated to us, the other was golf balls. The difference in the bounce test on the golf balls was quite impressive. I wonder if it'd be illegal to do that on the professional circuit?
We do deep cryogenic processing at our shop. The equipment and processes we use were developed/manufactured by 300Below Inc. Check out www.300below.com for more details and information on the process. It works well for many things. We've done stamping dies, slitting knives, soldering tips, spraywelding nozzles, engine and brake parts, gears and shafts for transmission, rearends and marine lower units and carbide and HHS cutters. Pretty much anything automotive, marine and industrial that can wear out can be treated. Nylons and other oriented polymers also respond very well. Failures on welded/repaired aluminum heads have been elimiated by treating them after the heavy surgury and before final machining. We do a run or two a month but can do one-off and emergency runs if needed. Complete motors (must be disassembled and degreased) run about 500 bucks. We do pieces and parts all the time. PM for a current price sheet. I've got a run scheduled for later this month if anybody wants to give it shot. -Bigchief.
It doesn't look or feel any different.....if you can't tell its been done then how are they going to enforce the rule? 100's of stock class racers can't be wrong. -Bigchief.
keep in mind you need to start with good quality parts. Parts with stress cracks or other similar problems / conditions will still fail. We have cryo'd some 7004r tranny parts that are prone to failure. The parts seem to take more abuse, final decision is still out though. I have read that ol Walt is not cryogenically frozen
How true. It doesn't make bad parts good...but can make good parts much better. We treated the internals of a customers Mercury Marine TRS lower units that were behind a pair of healthy BBC 540's and a 9500lb boat. Needless to say these poor things were on the ragged edge regardless due to the 625HP and nearly 800ftlbs of torque (each) pushing a nearly 5 ton boat. We explained up front (prior to treating the parts) that these units were not meant to take nearly 2X the torque rating they were designed for and that cryotreating doesn't necessarily mean the parts are bullet proof and that he needed to use the new found power gingerly. (We built the 9.5:1 540's as well) He came back a month later bitch'n and moaning about the lower units...he broke the input shaft in one unit and almost killed the other with some chipped gears. Prior to his arrival and subsequent bitch-fest we had heard (and were given pics) that he was abusing the boat (doubling as an airplane.....it was out of the water as much as it was in) jumping wakes at 70MPH+. He complained and got pretty vocal......until we showed him the pictures we had. He quietly ponied up for two more used/rebuilt/updated and cryo'd drives and promised to not abuse the boat anymore.......his hefty tab reminds him to behave. Although the real answer is different/stonger drives, two years of poker runs and hi-speed cruising later the two lower units are still holding up just fine. Oliver connecting rods......Oliver released a "long life" alumium rod a couple of years ago. How do you think they developed THAT? Deep Cryogenic tempering reduces/delays the work hardening/fatigue that occurs during the tension-compression cycling the rod sees during use resulting in an aluminum rod that is supposed to last longer than untreated aluminum rods.....we treat many aluminum connecting rods used in pulling tractors engines for the same reason. Cool stuff. -Bigchief.
There are also two human forms of this as well. One is the standard cryo after death, the other is a simple thing called Viagra. It makes things much harder, and they last much longer!
How do you suppose a cryo'd aluminum rod would compare to a steel rod in a supercharged mostly street/occasionally strip application?
I'd still stick to the steel rods on any street motor. Cycles are cycles and eventually the aluminum rod is going to let you down. Also the aluminum rods don't maintain proper bearing crush during long term use (they grow/get pounded out of round, etc) leading to bearing failures. Aluminum rods are awesome for short blasts of very high power/RPM use but they're still considered a 'wear' item that gets tossed out after a certain time frame......were the steel rod will pretty much keep going. -Bigchief.
No t sure if this stands true in every case but I did a set of clutch plates for a racebike and they would not fit back into the basket properly, it seems the process has changed the tolerances a little bit.
The cryo process should NOT change the physical dimentions of a part. Your case is the first I've heard of where a part did not fit after having it done.
I'll second that. We've done all kinds of materials (including various friction materials for a aircraft brake parts manufacturer) and have never had any detectable/measureable dimensional changes in any of the parts. -Bigchief.
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