floaters?

Has anyone used ti.floaters and how did they work?

 

Does someone actually offer them? I looked into them awhile ago, they are super expensive. Initially my thinking was that titanium will warp less and likes to return to its original shape so with the floater would outlast that of a steel one by far. But, Titanium likes to gall, especially to itself. This could be an issue if you also have titanium stands. The other major issue is titanium doesn’t have major friction capabilities, it’s friction capability would be well below that of a “regular” ole steel floater. It would need a coating just to get it to work.

In the end my take on it is it would be a huge learning curve, and anything that you gain from going to titanium would likely be offset by the variation in the coating. For example, this set might not have the friction capabilities as the last set, the coating might flake off, or worse some of the coatings (TMT comes to mind) when you smoke them they become like marbles and won’t lockup again until you grind em or replace the coating.

 

A bronze floater is just a steel floater with a coating. It does add aggressiveness and it has is applications. Since it’s a coating it can chip and chunk like a disc and for that reason you can’t really put cutters in them to help the disc wear and whisk away the dust. They are also a little dicey to grind flat again as they get aggressive and want to grab the grinding wheel. Just a little side bar on the bronze deal, their aggressiveness will vary differently than steel with a different compound disc. What I mean is if you go to a more aggressive disc with a steel floater you may gain 3-5%. You may gain 10-15% with those same discs and a bronze floater.

Back to the titanium. I was looking at Titanium for its memory purposes, the steel floaters seem to want to warp to one side. It seems to vary widely from each manufacturer how much they warp, some seem to be better about this than others. Anyways, my thinking was if I got it flat the way I wanted, I could run it all weekend, pull it out and it should go back to being flat. That was the idea anyway, and it never got further than that. The other issue like Mike mentioned is the titanium is not magnetic which makes it hard to chuck up on the table and get flat again, should it need it. While I was doing some research I talk to a few people last year at PRI that were making titanium brakes for roundy round guys, which is why I know that they would have to be coated. Basically the guys told me a raw titanium brake rotor won’t stop a car going 30 mph, no matter what the brake pads. You could be hard on the brakes and it would roll a seriously unreasonable distance before it stops. This is where the coating comes in to get the aggressiveness of the titanium up or above what a regular steel rotor would be.

 

I have used bronze floaters with great results.You have to grind them wet.even after 5 runs it takes .002 to .003 a side to get flat.They don't flake or chunk off.Also i have run TMT coated flywheel and donut and it stays flat and good for 50 plus runs and will clean up with a .002 cut HAVE TO USE DIAMOND OR CBN WHEEL .Guessing the bronze appears to be more aggressive because they are not warping as bad as a steel floater with cutters .Thickness wise i like starting out with a .400 thick floater just so i can get more use out of them there 400.00 ea i have run them to .300 and the tune up is 100 % predictable