the-hidden-truth-of-rotary-forged-alloy-wheels/ from buzai232's blog

the-hidden-truth-of-rotary-forged-alloy-wheels/

I want to get into some technical detail on alloy wheels and how this pertains not only to performance but your personal safety. I have been in the automotive high performance world since 1990 and I have seen every wheel trend come and go over the years. Back 18 years ago 20 inch wheels were the fad along with Spinners but those DUB days have come and gone quickly for the mass market. You can not blame these innovators in the industry for trying to reinvent the wheel per say because as consumers we are always looking for the next best thing or something that differentiates our choices from the masses. As the trends have cycled away from chrome wheels to the new hot trend of matte and gloss black even OEM manufactures have taken aim at earning buyer awareness on the showroom floors. Wheels can make or break a cars aesthetics in so many ways. A proper set of wheels can also transform a mundane boring car into an aggressive modern masterpiece. The objectives we all have are always simple, we want style, value and performance but the most important thing consumers never even bother asking is what about safety?To get more news about Steel wire wheel, you can visit nnxwheels.com official website.

Safety in regards to automobile engineering lies on two halves of active and passive but they equally go hand in hand. Anything that has to do with hardware of any of the active safety of a vehicle lies on a few key components, tires, wheels and the braking system. If any of these areas of discussion are compromised in any way it can lead to fatalities for you and your loved ones. OEM Manufactures these days make wheels of various forms and construction. Some of the upper end brands such as Ferrari and Porsche are incorporating forged and magnesium wheels for their supercars where as the majority are still using the loose sand cast methods. Sand casting has been around since the industrial revolution and I had the honor to visit one of the oldest foundries in the USA many years ago for a project we were involved in with one of my other companies. The process is simple, cheap and offers good repeatability but at a trade off. The trade off’s to loose sand cast wheels are the heavy weight, increased porosity and a much greater chance for fatigue and cracking. Radial runout is also an issue with sand casting due to poor manufacturing tooling done overseas. Living and driving in the NYC area I am well versed in dealing with rim bending and failures my entire adulthood and as I later learned more about wheels it just emphasized how important wheel construction is for any car on the road today.
As you can see above the rotary forged wheels start out using the standard loose cast method as all wheels do for our industry. What changed in this process is instead of them making a full fixture mold for the wheels face and barrel they re-engineered the mold to be cast with enough material for spin forming while the face profile and design is fully loose cast. Spin forming is done with heat and applied pressure using hardened rollers and a special sequence of a CNC programmer per design and shape. The rollers take the hot annealed aluminum alloy and stretch and shape the barrel and outer flange area. Technically this spin forming is called rotary forged but the term is often misunderstood. The benefits to this are simple and effective at creating new designs with much lighter weight. Every one of these wheel manufactures on the market today will stress and emphasize that rotary forged wheels are just as good as a true forged 1 piece Monoblock wheel. That is false and anyone that understands metallurgy and engineering will argue over such statements to consumers. As a consumer you can not expect to know all the nitty gritty of wheel construction but it is the misleading marketing that gets tossed around through all media channels that causes quite a stir. The advantages to this new trending technology are outstanding for the mass market but not so much for the smaller high performance motorsport segments. By adapting the rotary forged technique to the cast wheel manufacturing these alloy wheel companies are able to offer cutting edge styles for cars that were not possible unless you went to a custom forged wheel. By making the wheels look better, lighter and more affordable the trend of rotary forging is here to stay and should only get better as technology progresses. The mass market of customers driving their cars on the street make up 95% of this market share where as the remaining 5% fall into the higher end luxury and motorsport segments. Not many consumers today with the rate of inflation or practicality can afford or even justify the investment in a true forged wheel. I totally get this because the benefits of a true forged wheel will only be experienced by certain individuals and their needs. Having a set of $15,000 HRE wheels on your BMW M3 that cruises around town is clearly for the looks and status and those same looks can be achieved with a rotary forged wheel for about $2000. With basic economics you can understand why this new rotary forged marketing and manufacturing process has truly dented the forged wheel industry. Customers now are shifting to these brands of wheels because they are much better quality than cast wheels of the past, lighter, look great and offer great value.