It has been a century since the appearance of friction materials, and the development and development trend of friction materials in my country has also experienced more than half a new century. Nowadays, the scientific research, production and application of friction materials in our country are in the link of rapid development trend, showing a vigorous scene. Friction material products have long become a very characteristic and indispensable industrial chain in the social economy.

    1-1. The advent of friction materials in my country

    In 1918, Lao Zhichang and Wang Dafu of the Beijing-Fengzhou Railway established China’s first asbestos product company Tianjin Asbestos Enterprise in Tianjin. They purchased asbestos from Laiyuan, Hebei, and produced asbestos threads and asbestos packing products. The total output was about 150 tons. Because there are few asbestos products on the sales market, Tianjin asbestos enterprises have achieved higher profits, which has caused the interest of Shanghai and other businessmen to open factories. The businessmen of Shanghai area distributors overseas asbestos products founded Shanghai Taiji Asbestos Factory . In the 1930s, Tianjin Zhenye Asbestos Factory expanded its business processes to Wuhan, Shanghai and other places. At the same stage, some businessmen in Chongqing jointly opened the asbestos production base of Shancheng Industrial Company Equity Co., Ltd., purchased asbestos from Xikang, and produced asbestos thread, asbestos cloth and asbestos powder.

    After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the owners of the Tianjin Zhenye Asbestos Factory established the Zhenye Asbestos Industrial Production Equity Co., Ltd. and the asbestos knitting factory. The total output of asbestos thread was 120 tons. There are also some other areas such as Shanghai, Dandong, etc. are also using hand-made and simple mechanical equipment textile asbestos thread. By 1949, there were only 18 small and medium-sized asbestos product companies across the country, producing 14 types of asbestos powder, asbestos rope, general asbestos packing, asbestos cloth and asbestos rubber pads, and more than 150 specifications and models of low-end products. The production volume is about 200 tons.

    Before the 1940s, there was no real occurrence of brake friction lining materials in my country's asbestos products, which only laid the foundation for the development trend of friction materials. The clutch plate developed by Mr. Shi Ligeng in 1942 was installed on a 10-wheeled truck made in Britain, which is probably the time when friction materials in our country came out.

    In 1939, during the difficult years of the Anti-Japanese War, the 24-year-old Mr. Shi Ligeng rushed to Guizhou Province in the rear of Guizhou with the evacuated abortion. He worked as a maintenance worker in several auto repair shops. At that time, there was a vacancy in the production of my country's automobile industry. Automobiles and spare parts were imported from overseas, which was very lacking. When the imported parts are interrupted, the maintenance workers have to use their brains to produce them. Under such conditions, Mr. Shi Ligeng gradually used simple CNC lathes to imitate the wearing parts of imported cars, and he started to manufacture automobile piston rods and transmission gears and succeeded. However, for the friction materials that are used in a large amount in the driving of automobiles, because they are non-metallic materials, the organic chemical structure is cumbersome and cannot be imitated. Thus he created the idea of scientific research on friction materials. He rented a house on Chengji Road in Guiyang, and gradually studied the production technology of automobile friction materials.

    Old Mr. Shi Ligeng kept trying to figure out the old clutch pads removed from British cars, and gradually explored experiments. He cut the waste tires into small pieces, simmered them in an iron box, desulfurized the flue gas, and melted them with car gasoline to make a glue for reclaimed rubber. For this purpose, as a binder, add asbestos wool and stir evenly together, and then disperse and air dry. For the mold shell, a thick seamless steel pipe is used as the mold body, and a thick steel plate with the same diameter as the seamless steel pipe is used as the left and right control module. After adding the material and tamping, place all the pipes in the furnace and burn them until they are dry and solid. Obtained the piece clutch face piece sample. It is an extremely unusual thing. It shows the historical time curtain for the production of friction materials in our country. Therefore, Mr. Shi Ligeng is known as the pioneer in the development of friction materials in our country.

    1-2. Initial research ideas

    In 1942, Mr. Shi Ligeng cooperated with others to operate and bought a Dodge truck. While running back and forth between Guiyang, Kunming and Chongqing to earn money, he practiced activities with the car to find out the new century application standards of friction materials. To meet the most basic requirements of friction materials, he chose gum instead of reclaimed rubber adhesive. After the gum is melted with ethanol, bone charcoal powder is used as a filler, and asbestos wool is used as a textile material, which is stirred and evenly weighed to form a clutch surface sheet. After loading, it can be used to replace imported clutch pads. More than one hundred clutch plates developed and sold to Chongqing City have achieved satisfactory practical results.

    During the whole process of research and development, Mr. Shi Ligeng found that adhesives are the basis for the production of friction materials. By an inadvertent opportunity, he bought a book "Bakelite and Electric Jade", which detailed the characteristics, main uses and simple production methods of various adhesives. According to the method of making high-temperature resistant adhesive urea-formaldehyde resin detailed in the book, he bought a solution of carbolic acid and formalin from a pharmacy and boiled the epoxy resin by itself in an iron box. Because it reflects the standards and the prohibition of preparation, the epoxy resin initially boiled does not dry up. After all the hardships, we succeeded in drying the urea-formaldehyde resin, and replaced the gum with the urea-formaldehyde resin to make the clutch face sheet.

    1-3. A small workshop of friction materials in our country

    In 1946, Mr. Shi Ligeng returned to Hangzhou from Guizhou Province. In the second year, he raised funds to rent a house in Hangzhou's Xiaozixian Sunfang to prepare a small workshop of asbestos friction materials, and gradually produced goods at the end of the year. At this time, the small workshop has a spiral hand plate model press heated with wood carbon; the epoxy resin reactor is gradually heated by a water bath placed in an iron pot, and an outer cover with a small round hole is made; asbestos is also used After the line is pre-impregnated with epoxy resin, of course, the process of drying to make the clutch face sheet has promoted the old-fashioned production.

    After the liberation of Hangzhou, part of the staff left, and the processing plant was struggling. By the third quarter of that year, under the application of the Hangzhou government, Mr. Shi Ligeng boosted the old industry and established a newly completed automobile material factory. Machines and equipment such as presses, epoxy resin tanks, wire bonding machines were made again, and the old CNC lathes were used to grind the clutch pads using the CNC grinders reformed from the old CNC lathes, and the wooden boxes packed with charcoal shells were used as the commodity drying boxes. At this time, benzene was used to melt the natural rubber and then added sulfur powder to blend into the urea-formaldehyde resin to improve the strength of the product. At that time, the production volume was very small. It could produce more than ten pieces of clutch dough per day. The annual production volume was about 5 tons. The market price was 6000-15000 yuan/piece, and the combined market price was about 6-15 yuan/piece. Imported parts sell for more than $3 per pair.

    In the early 1950s, the asbestos brake friction pad material was successfully trial-produced. The selected asbestos cloth was pre-impregnated with epoxy resin after drying, and then stretched and pressed. At that time, there were 6 handle presses, 1 grinder, 1 CNC lathe, 1 drilling machine, and 2 CNC lathes. The product category has improved the brake system belts of oil rigs, construction machinery equipment brake belts, fishing gear toothed plates, etc. The secret recipe processing technology is characterized by using asbestos cloth and asbestos thread as the basic raw materials, the adhesive is mainly composed of thermosetting resin, the benzene melted vulcanized rubber is used as the modified material, and the release agent is paper or cooked tung oil. Among them, the renewal and transformation succeeded in replacing the charcoal heating press with heating wire heating. After the implementation of public-private partnerships for private enterprises in my country, the small workshop was changed to Hangzhou Automobile Manufacturing Plant, and then the name was changed to Hangzhou Completion Automobile Manufacturing Plant. After that, it was renamed several times and evolved into Hangzhou Friction Materials Co., Ltd.

    1-4. Development trend in the past ten years

    Above all in the middle and late stages of my country's reform and opening up in the 1990s, there were more than 100 manufacturers of friction materials, rubber seals, and thermal insulation materials throughout the country, and state-owned and substrate companies accounted for the majority. The characteristic of this kind of company is comprehensive, producing friction materials as well as sealing and thermal insulation materials; the production method is from the solution of textile materials to the production of epoxy resin, and then to the production of work clothes and equipment, most of which rely on The company itself handles it; the operating model also mostly maintains the planned economic system. With the convergence of the planned economic system to the market economic system, such methods and core concepts have long been extremely unsuitable. In order to better produce, most companies carried out trials such as contracting, transfer, escrow, corporate mergers, partnerships and their cost reduction and efficiency enhancement. The whole process of pain that the material company must go through. What's more, non-state-owned economic companies have gradually connected from filling character roles to popular company character roles, introducing obvious sales market incentives. The total number, scale of operations and economic benefits of joint-stock companies and private enterprises have improved significantly here over a period of time; overseas wholly-owned and Sino-foreign cooperative companies all have strong development potential. As of 2015, friction material companies across the country with production licenses have already achieved more than 400 companies, and a very large number of companies are producing without a license, and the total friction material production company is above 500 or even higher. . The company's key is spread in Shandong Province, Zhejiang Province, Guangdong Province, Fujian Province, Hubei Province and other economic development regions, generating group utility. Symbolic companies include Shandong Jinqilin Group Corporation, which was founded and developed in 1991-1997. It has more than 2,000 employees and has established subsidiaries abroad. Many disc brake pads produced by the company are imported and exported to Europe, the United States, Australia and other countries and regions; Dongying Zhongxin Auto Parts Co., Ltd. of Dongying City, Shandong Province has disc brake pads and short story brake system hoof master products. The facilities are compatible with China's automobile assembly process and import and export, and it has successfully entered overseas host supporting facilities; Fujian Guanliang Automobile Parts Co., Ltd.'s drum test brake pad market is sold in most regions of the country; others, such as Hangzhou West Lake Friction Materials Co., Ltd., Mingshi Auto Parts Enterprise in Zhejiang Province, Zaoyang Xingya Friction Material Co., Ltd., Anhui Zhongli Automobile Brake System Manufacturing Co., Ltd., etc. have very good sales volume; the original state-owned enterprise was reformed Companies with good future development trends include Hubei Julong Friction Material Equity Co., Ltd. and so on. This newly developed company produces complete sets of machinery and equipment, and the processing technology is rationally arranged in a line, and attaches great importance to product research and development, and has a relatively complete management system for material testing machinery and equipment.

    According to the survey, the production volume and annual output value of friction materials across the country have increased dramatically in the past ten years. In 2005, the production volume was 278,800 tons, and the annual output value was about RMB 4.7 billion, among which non-asbestos products accounted for more than 50%. Automobile disc brake pads account for nearly 50%. The delivery value of friction material export products has reached about 1.5 billion yuan, which has created a large level so far.

    The industrial production of friction materials in my country is in a link of rapid development trend, gradually expanding to the world stage, and may gradually become a global production base of friction materials. Under the bridge of industry associations, the integration of industry, learning, and research will eventually give the friction material work a brilliant tomorrow.