The Guide to Brakes

Brakes are one of the most important parts of any vehicle. You and your passengers’ safety rests on these devices, which are built to slow down your car gradually or to completely halt your car during an emergency. Good-quality working brakes are absolutely essential to safe driving. Brakes are also useful for machines and equipment with moving parts that need to be stopped from time to time. If you’re a driver or an equipment operator, and you want to get the best out of your machine, you need to know a few things about these very useful devices.

What Are Brakes?

Brakes are devices that stop a machine part from moving, or slow down a fast-moving machine part. Brakes are found in almost every device with moving parts. The simplest brakes are levers that stall or stop the motion of a moving wheel, like in a bicycle. Brakes for cars and aircraft have a more complicated and sophisticated design to make up for high speeds and emergency situations.

All moving objects eventually slow down until they stop completely, but this law of physics is impractical and unsafe for travel and for operating heavy machinery. Momentum can work to your disadvantage especially on high speeds. When you have to slow down or completely stop the machine, you need to slow down or stop the building of momentum. Without brakes, your vehicle will crash, the moving parts will wear down faster, and the machine will overheat.

Purposes of Brakes

Here are some uses of brakes:

• Preserve the lifespan of moving parts. Brakes act as a barrier against excessive stressful contact between moving parts. A brake protects a machine’s moving parts and prolongs its working life.
• Safety. For vehicles and other machinery, brakes are absolutely essential for safety. Without brakes, machines will just keep going and going, and can only be stopped by a direct, opposing force. For cars and motorcycles, this can mean a serious or even fatal accident.
• Add to mechanical advantage. Brakes add to mechanical advantage either by storing energy from the momentum it absorbs, or transferring the mechanical energy for other purposes.

How Brakes Work

Brakes depend on three physical forces to do their work:

• Friction. Moving parts resist the surface, movement, or contact with the brake, and transfer force and energy to the brake in the form of heat. Friction will eventually wear down the brake, but that’s the purpose of the device.
• Leverage. Brake pedals, and even the brake itself, acts as a lever in relation to the moving parts. Some brakes move towards the section of the moving part that moves fastest, and acts as a fulcrum to resist the building momentum.
• Hydraulics. Brake fluid is often used to assist and lubricate the brakes, and guard against wear from friction. The fluid is dispensed from a canister or receptacle through manual or automatic triggers, usually through a switch or a brake pedal. Air brakes and pneumatic brakes use the power of compressed air to stop movement and delay the force of momentum.

Taking Care of Brakes

Like every part of your machine, your brakes eventually wear down because of heat and friction damage. From time to time, you need to keep your brakes working at an optimal condition before you replace them with new ones. Here are some ways that you can keep your brakes working at their best and finest:

• Keep your brakes lubricated with good-quality brake fluid.
• Remember to bleed the brakes of a machine or a car properly. You may need two or more brake fluid changes before you end up with clean brakes that are free from debris.
• Never cool down an overheated brake with cold water. You can risk physical damage to your brakes, like fractures, cracks and fissures. A brake that’s not in good condition is not very effective and efficient at slowing down momentum, and may even be very dangerous to use. If your brakes overheat, allow them to cool in room temperature.

Whether they’re for cars or machines, brakes are extremely important for safety and mechanical advantage. The next time you drive a car or operate a machine, give a little thought to the brakes that make it all run – and stop – smoothly and efficiently.