Magura Direct 724 West Clem Olney IL 62450 (800) 448-3876
PRESS RELEASE Magura: MISSION PERFORMANCE Magura was the first company in the Bike Industry to manufacture hydraulic brakes and has continued to be a leader in brake and suspension technology for decades as products like the Gustav-M boast legendary status even to this day. But Magura hasn’t been content to rest on its reputation as a disc brake pioneer. Though others have attempted to challenge Magura’s technology and performance, the Magura Team has continued to raise the bar since the beginning. With all the technology, performance and low-weight packed into modern disk brakes, it’s fair to ask, “Can current disc brakes be improved upon?” Magura’s engineers insisted that it was indeed possible! As a result, the Bad Urach based Magura engineers embarked on an ambitious project that took the German company into uncharted technological territory. With Magura’s MISSION PERFORMANCE project, the company has thrown every resource available to them into the mix—world class production facilities, precision engineering, high-end product development expertise, and decades of experience in a bid to achieve one lofty goal: To build the best disc bicycle brake in the world, utilizing a new generation of groundbreaking technology. Our Goal: To create the best disc bicycle brake in the world. At Magura, we firmly believe that we make the best hydraulic disc brakes in the market, since it has been our core expertise for decades. But we also realized that to create another revolution in disc brakes we would need to change our way of thinking. We needed to study what riders are demanding. What do non-competitive athletes need? What do professional racers require? How do we create brakes that meet the needs of both average cyclists and hard-core racers? How do we overcome individual preferences? Our Method: We studied, listened, tested and repeated. The MISSION PERFORMANCE goal would not have been a success without the feedback of the world’s most discriminating riders, both recreational and professional. We consulted riders at the world’s biggest and best mountain bike festivals. We ran The Magura Crash Contest to gain insight on defects, failures and crashes that consumers have had riding various products from the world’s disc brake manufacturers. We utilized social networking sites to garner feedback from
our core global audience. And finally, we carried out spectacular endurance tests at the MISSION PERFORMANCE Test Lab to ascertain the shortcomings of current disc brake offerings. Magura Performance Faktor Through exhaustive testing and feedback we finally divided disc brake performance into four categories: Weight, Heat Stability, Performance and Ergonomics. Each was evaluated as individual Performance Faktors and allowed us to take into account the needs of all riders, from XC riders to Downhill racers. Since one brake may be very light weight, yet suffer from poor performance under extreme conditions, and another may have excellent power but be exceptionally heavy, the best brakes in the world cannot specialize in these aspects alone: they must excel in all factors.
Our Challenge: To build a better mousetrap In terms of Performance, which includes deceleration and modulation, Magura is already well ahead of the competition, and there was precious little room to improve stopping power. The challenge then was to make the brake as light as possible without compromising performance under high heat or extreme conditions. Indeed, this is the challenge every brake manufacturer has strived to overcome.
Another challenge was to improve the ergonomic function of the lever. Magura’s next generation of brakes will feature new ergonomics determined by a leading German ergonomics researcher, Professor Schmauder of the Chemnitz University of Technology. Among the studies performed, Prof. Schmauder set up a blind study with thousands of test subjects where they rated the ergonomics of the World’s top brakes on feel alone. With the extensive feedback acquired, and utilizing Magura’s in-house development team, the company then set about to exponentially increase the Performance Facktors of its 2011 line of disc brakes. MISSION PERFORMANCE: Revolutionary Materials The Magura Design Team determined that the ideal material to build the disc brake of the future would have exceptional tensional and flexural strength and boast absolute precision, dimensional stability and supreme fatigue strength to withstand years of heavy-duty use. These materials exist, but generally are very heavy or impractical to work with and are not suitable for bicycle applications. With the shortcomings of conventional materials like cast aluminum, magnesium, and carbon laminates, it was readily apparent that a groundbreaking new disc brake would have to come from an entirely new material. As a result the MISSION PERFORMANCE team was forced to create a new material which would fit the demands of the new design: that material is Carbotecture®.
Carbotecture® is a revolutionary new injection-molding compound which cannot be compared with either conventional fiber-reinforced plastics or laminated carbon sheets. It has a high concentration of carbon fibers embedded in its thermoplastic matrix which makes it half the weight of aluminum, yet considerably stronger, extremely resistant to impact and fracture, and gives it very high fatigue strength. Its tensile strength per density is twice as high as aluminum or magnesium and six times higher than that of steel or die-cast zinc. Carbotecture® is also much more homogeneous and predictable than aluminum, allowing for further lightening of key components. To utilize this revolutionary material, Magura created a new manufacturing process called Carboflow®. Magura’s proprietary new process allows the company to maintain its exacting standards and maximize process reliability, precision and manufacturing tolerances with the lightest possible material distribution. The Carboflow® process has the added benefit of allowing complete in-house processing at MAGURA Germany and allowing maximum process reliability, dimensional stability and precision manufacturing opening unprecedented options in terms of component design. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! With the completion of the Magura MISSION PERFORMANCE project the Magura Team is proud to offer a glimpse to the world of what has been created! The research, testing and development of new processes and materials have allowed Magura unprecedented options in design and manufacturing. These exciting new developments, combined with the vision of the MISSION PERFORMANCE Team, have resulted in the creation of a new line of disc brakes for 2011 and beyond, which will raise the bar to a new level of performance and durability, and make a bold engineering statement to the world.
Jeff Enlow General Manager Magura Direct