Cranes, conveyors, washing machines and wind turbines all have industrial braking systems as central components. Understanding the different types of brake calipers and brakes in your equipment can help you to easily identify issues and ensure high quality maintenance. Most Alanco-Alamatic brakes are used for tension control applications where a product is put through a process: usually glueing, cutting, printing or twisting (on cable machines).

The function of brake calipers in an industrial brake system is to control mechanical speed by creating friction. There are different types of brake calipers that make up most industrial braking systems including pneumatic, hydraulic and handwheel.

A long standing debate in the machine world: should you replace or repair ageing parts. Let’s explore this a little more...

No amount of grease can make up for old, worn or failing brakes. No matter how often you try to delay the inevitable, it will almost always be more cost effective and safer to replace old with new. Constant heating and cooling can result in excessive movement, binding, pulling, warping, uneven wear and unwanted noise.

Alanco brakes need to be checked on a regular basis as the brake pad is bonded to a metal backplate. It is important that the pad does not wear to the point that the metal backplate touches the disc. You would expect the metal on metal noise to be obvious, but in a noisy industrial setting it can happen. In extreme cases, the backplate can completely wear down and even damage the brake arm. This situation is likely to result in an expensive repair especially if the disc is damaged and needs replacing.

Alamatic brakes have a different design. There is a pusher that pushes the pad against the disc and when the pad is fully worn, the pusher hits a stop. On-going maintenance is still important though as the machine operator must be sure that there is enough pad material to complete the process. If the pad was to fully wear down mid run, this would likely cause quality issues with the product being processed.

There are several factors that you need to take into account when deciding if you need to replace your caliper disc brakes...

Sometimes your production patterns change and when this happens, even your best equipment will need to change with it. You might be required to use lighter or heavier materials that your braking system isn’t calibrated to handle; or your machinery may be expected to perform for longer, continuous periods.

The older your machinery gets, the harder it becomes to find replacement parts. If you keep putting off finding new parts, it may become more difficult and expensive to find them later on down the line. In this case, it might be best to replace all of your parts rather than repair them when broken.

Every Alanco-Alamatic brake has brake linings (brake pads) and a rubber diaphragm. It is recommended to replace the diaphragm at the same time as the pads are replaced. After repeated use, the diaphragm can split and it is important that it remains fully sealed.

If you find you are continually making repairs, it might be time to replace the brake system. If you’re continually repairing your machines, it becomes more costly than just replacing the brake system because of the negative impact on productivity.
Trying to save money by repairing rather than replacing will cost you more in the long run. Look for signs and solve issues before they happen.

Emergency / Fail Safe Brakes

With increased safety regulations across all sectors, the demand for fail safe brakes has increased significantly. Emergency brakes are spring applied / air released and are used in a wide range of environments, sectors and appliances from industrial washing machines to large scale installations such as swing bridges. Applications tend to be heavy duty and Alanco-Alamatic’s range of fail safe brakes are all constructed from durable cast iron.

Hydraulically Applied Brakes

Hydraulically applied brake calipers tend to be used on heavy duty holding applications designed for use where a pneumatic supply is not available.

Air Applied Tension Brakes

With an air pressure range of 0 - 100 psi, a wide range of tensioning performance can be achieved by Alanco’s pneumatically controlled braking systems. This performance range can be further increased by using a multi caliper brake. Up to eight individual calipers can be mounted around a disc and controlled individually.

A plain disc can be used or, more usually the case, a ventilated disc will be used because a lot of heat can be generated on a continuously running tension application. In addition, an internal fan can be mounted in the brake for extra cooling.

Manually Applied Brakes

Manually applied / handwheel brakes are ideal for applications where there is no pneumatic or hydraulic supply. Alanco-Alamatic manufactures manual brakes to suit discs from 125mm to 1000mm diameter and 13mm to 100mm thickness.

To complement our braking systems Alanco-Alamatic manufactures safety chucks. These are used when a reel product is used with an air shaft. Each end of the air shaft has a square, usually 40mm, which locates into square inserts of the safety chuck: as the reel starts to rotate, the safety chuck handwheels rotate and close automatically. 

A brake disc is mounted to the stub shaft that extends out from the back of the safety chuck with braking system calipers fitted to purpose built brackets.

This guide is intended to provide a basic overview. If you have any further questions about industrial braking systems or if you would like to book an on-site survey with one of Alanco Alamatic’s expert engineers, please contact us.