What is MAGURA Carbotecture®
Why Carbotecture®
In industry like cycling is every technological progress very complex step, which costs many expensive investments, many years of development, changes in every workflow trought whole product model family and ofcourse many and many months of complex testing in various conditions. So why Magura choosed to step further and change the material of their levers to Carbotecture® when there is many years verified aluminium?
Magura mission is to always brings the best technology in the world doof cycling and like any other company in the world can change the whole development process very fast. Thanks to Maguras own production plants in Europe and development central in Germany (Bad Urach). Magura is not so strongly connected to he development and delivery of other supplier. Magura also wants to bring the best comparsion of price and the quality of product and thanks to many years of experiences with many types of plastic, they finaly decided to create some new great material mixture like Carbotecture® is for their products. There is another part of change in development process - the quality control which increases whole quality of products which are completed together in Hülben and Hengen, where is are another development plants which makes the final proces - complete the parts together in final product!
Carbotecture® is not plastic
On first sight the brake lever in Magura MT family of Magura HS family can look like they are made from "plastic", but that is just a very simple view from the surface, and which is also wrong! Magura Carbotecture® is so much more! Carbotecture® is logic combination of words Carbon and Architecture which also gives you a little help to understand from which materials are Magura products made!
Here is a brief explanation of how we create our basic Carbotecture® material: First of all, a mixture of high-tech polymers and carbon or glass fibres is converted into a plastic granulate by means of several complex processes. During the processing from the granulate to the finished component, the carbon fibres are then optimally aligned to match future stress requirements. This “Carboflow” process can create any desired shape from the granulate during an injection moulding process.
Carbotecture® offers major advantages compared to classic lightweight aluminium – for example, it’s 50% lighter, but it possesses the same tensile and breaking strength!
Unlimited master cylinder shape
Thanks to Magura highly developed machines and processes, Carbotecture® is indeed a dream material, from which smooth surfaces can be created in almost any complex shape – and this is also how they made rigid yet lightweight brake masters.
Magura increased the resistance of Carbotecture SL® material by integrating medium-length carbon fibres into the polyamides instead of short fibres – and this also reduces the weight of the material. The brake masters of award-winning MT disc brake series are made of Carbotecture® and Carbotecture SL®.
Yet another of Magura materials is Carbolay®. It is produced in a fully automated procedure, during which a textile process is used to position the carbon fibres according to load. The fibres are then automatically impregnated with resin in a mould. This process enables to produce Carbolay® lever blades in an attractive and ergonomically optimized form – and the blades also achieve perfect finger force transmission thanks to their high degree of rigidity and low weights.
BMW and Carbotecture®
BMW also relies on the special properties of Carbotecture® for its motorcycles – the clutch master of the BMW GS is also made of this material, for instance.
