Braking
with Tradition
Story and photos by Scott Rathburn
From CNC Machining Magazine, Winter 2001
The last thing most people
think about while driving down the freeway – usually at
speeds in excess of 70 miles per hour – is
whether their brakes, or those of the vehicle
behind them, are any good. Until, that is,
they have to slam on those brakes to avoid
hitting the vehicle in front of them. The one
they are rapidly approaching because they were
too busy – talking on their cell phone,
reading the newspaper, shaving, putting on
make-up, eating, yelling at the kids, or just
plain not paying attention – to notice
that it was slowing down.
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OE Quality Friction
owner Norman Abbott
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In that brief, but very intense, moment of
panic, most people spend as much time watching
the car behind them getting closer in their
rear view mirror as they do watching themselves
getting closer to the car in front of them.
It’s a fine line: Do you trust your own
brakes and reflexes, or trust the brakes and
reflexes of the person behind you?
What’s it take to stop a 7,000-pound
SUV traveling at 80 miles per hour, anyway?
Well, consider this: it takes about twice as
much as it does to stop the 3,500-pound vehicle
for which its brakes were probably designed.
Now that’s scary.
For Norman Abbott, however, that SUV rushing
up in his rearview mirror is like money in
the bank. Every time that driver slams on the
brakes, it’s another chunk out of the
life of that vehicle’s brake pads. And
brake pads are what Norman Abbott is all about.
Norm is the owner and president of OE Quality
Friction of Mississauga, Ontario, a company
that manufactures original-equipment-quality
disc brake pads for the automotive aftermarket.
His specialty is brake pads for light trucks,
vans and, you guessed it, SUVs. Of course,
OE manufactures pads for passenger cars, as
well; but when Norm put together his business
plan to start the company a few years back,
he saw a growing trend toward light trucks
and SUVs. Betting that trend would continue,
he chose to concentrate his efforts on that
market. It’s a bet that paid off: Light
trucks and SUVs currently account for more
than 50 percent of all new vehicle sales.
Brake pads – or friction materials as
they’re known in the business – are
nothing new to Norman. For years he worked
for Allied Signal Friction Materials, a major
supplier of original equipment brake pads to
the automotive industry. “I was vice
president of engineering at one time, and I
was responsible for developing a bunch of OE
(original equipment) formulas that are still
in production today with the vehicle manufacturers,” he
explains. “I ran the operation here in
Canada up until about 1992.”
That’s when Allied Signal decided there
was too much production capacity in North America
and Europe. So, because the Canadian dollar
was worth about 87 cents at the time and going
in the wrong direction, they closed down the
Canadian plant. Norman Abbott found himself
out of a job.
“Systematically, I let 450 people go,
got out of the business, got interviewed for
a few jobs, decided that age discrimination was
alive and well, did a bit of consulting for
a few friction companies, then decided that
what I needed to do was start a company,” Norm
explains.
That company is OE Quality Friction. “I
got a bunch of people around me – some
other guys who had worked at Allied Signal
put some money in – I wrote a business
plan, went to the banks, borrowed a lot of
money and started the company,” he says.
Though Norm makes it sound easy, he knew the
only way he’d be able to compete with
the “big boys” was to make his
own tooling. Gone are the days of simply riveting
pucks of friction material to backing plates
and calling it a day. Today’s disc brake
pads are integrally molded: The friction material
is formed to size and bonded directly to the
backing plate under extreme heat and pressure
in a single operation. It’s a method
that requires dedicated tooling for each unique
pad.
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Article and photographs courtesy of CNC Machining Magazine (Winter 2001) and Haas Automation, Inc. |
