Bore gauge system measures brake caliper grooves

Bowers Metrology UK has supplied a custom-built bore gauge system to Alcon Components in order to accurately measure internal brake caliper grooves.

Established in 1984 by engineer and sports car racer John Moore, the brake and clutch product manufacturer, Alcon Components, now employs more than 80 staff at its global headquarters and manufacturing facility based in Tamworth, Staffordshire.

Complementing the work of technical sales personnel located in the UK, the US and France, Alcon has a network of distributors situated throughout Europe, Africa and Australasia.

Alcon's range of brake and clutch products are able to satisfy a wide spectrum of customers, from an F1 designer seeking a bespoke solution, to an enthusiast building a race car on a tight budget.

Alcon's advanced brake hardware is used by a number of prominent F1 teams and is also supplied to Citroen, helping Sebastien Loeb to dominate the World Rally Championship (WRC) in recent years.

The motor sport departments of Audi, BMW, Ford, Peugeot, Renault and Volkswagen are all Alcon customers.

In the US, every IRL title since 2003 has been won using Alcon brakes.

Nascar customers include Penske, Joe Gibbs Racing and Richard Petty Motorsports.

In the field of specialist and performance road cars, Alcon serves a list of road car manufacturers, including Audi, Bentley, Brabus, Jaguar and Land Rover.

The company's reputation is illustrated by the advanced brake calipers it supplies for the Bentley Continental GT Supersports and Audi RS6, the company's vast but lightweight eight-piston calipers are designed specifically to clamp the largest of road car brake discs.

The safety critical nature of Alcon's products dictates that the company runs an extremely stringent quality control regime.

In addition to employing a full range of high-tech inspection equipment, the specialised nature of the company's products means that bespoke solutions to some of Alcon's more unusual measuring applications have to be sought.

An illustration of the solutions that Alcon applies to difficult gauging problems is the custom-built bore gauge system recently supplied by Bowers Metrology UK.

Having sought an easy to use, off-the-shelf solution to the precise measurement of a pressure seal groove and a wiper seal groove, located in the piston bore of a high-performance brake caliper, Carl Evans, Alcon's quality engineer, was unable to find a standard gauge that would match the company's demanding accuracy specification.

A chance conversation with a Bowers sales engineer resulted in Bowers manufacturing a specialised digital bore gauge.

'Based on Bowers' XT Xtreme, pistol grip digital bore gage, our new measuring kit has measuring anvils that match the profiles of our caliper bore grooves,' said Evans.

'By pulling the gauge's trigger, the instrument's anvils retract allowing entry into the bore, releasing the trigger enables the contacts to locate accurately into our difficult to access grooves.

'The resulting diameter measurement is then instantly displayed on the gauges digital output.

'The micron capable Bowers gauges are extremely repeatable; they have speeded up a time-consuming inspection routine and have proven very popular with our machine operators.

'The higher magnitude of dimensional measuring accuracy that the Bowers kit has delivered enabled us to recently undertake a rigorous process capability study,' he added.

The result of this exercise has delivered process improvements and a reduction in the purchase of consumable tooling.

Bowers describes its XT Xtreme range as the ideal solution to bore gauging within hostile measuring environments, such as in close proximity to machine tools.

The XT Xtreme bore gauging range has advanced electronics with IP65 rating, rendering them resistant to coolant and water.

They feature a clear digital display, a metric/inch conversion, an RS232 output and hard-wearing extended travel carbide measuring anvils.

Available to measure diameters up to 300mm, Bowers is able to manufacture inexpensive one-off XT instruments to cater for many non-standard internal measuring applications, such as threads, grooves and splines.

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