Bedding in pads, what happens?

I know that you have to bed in disc brake pads otherwise you have very little grip. I know how to do it and I’ve bedded in a few since moving to discs but what I don’t know is what, physically or chemically, you’re actually doing; I know heat is involved but not what happens to make a bedded in pad grippy. Anyone able to enlighten me?

delusion overcomes common sense

I should think someone will know, me, I suspect that there is an element of getting the shape the same as the grooves on the rotor. Am sure there must be more to it than that though.
I think I will get a cup of tea and see what we find out 🙂

Feng shui? It MUST be.

The pad surface is worn so that conforms to any minute irregularities in the disc surface. Any magical properties confirred by heating are just a figment of over active imagination.

Does heat just help the pad from falling to bits?

You need to make the disc & pad really hot so that it burns off the outer layer of tha pad, then the freshly mown meadow smell will be released

no the pad falls to bits when they get water behind the compound and the backing plate rusts/corrodes.
Do you really think that if that was the case that pad makers would let us do that?

found this:-

The simple answer is friction. BUT- that’s only part of the answer!
Brake pads work with a combination of TWO FRICTION TECHNOLOGIES:

1) ABRASIVE FRICTION
This involves the braking of molecular bonds between the pad material and the iron in the brake disc. Pads that function on this basis (typically organic pads) tend to have a high wear-rate and low resistance to high-temperature brake fade.

2) ADHERENT FRICTION
Adherent friction is developed when a transfer-film of the same compound of the pad material is deposited as a very thin ‘film’ on the surface of the rotor.
In this instance, the friction is caused by a breaking of molecular bonds between the two like friction materials amongst themselves (one on the pad and one on the surface of the rotor)

Most performance brake pad manufacturers now manufacture pads that function as a combination of these two technologies. These pads tend to have higher coefficients of friction over a wider range of temperatures.

here’s some blurb from a bicycle brake manufacturer:hayes
hayes refer to the process of bedding as burnishing, but then, they are american, and americans like to use different words for things, so i’ll forgive ’em.
those blokes at hayes are clearly shysters though. what do they know about brakes? 🙂

As said above – 3 things happen.
The pad conforms to the shape of the surface of the disc
The pad is cured under heat and pressure
A thin layer of pad material is deposited on the disc.

All well known and well proven.

its definetly about moulding it to the irregularities in the brake rotor, and not about heat – you ever tried bedding pads in a microwave?

real man – read the science – it is about heat – you need to get the pad hot enough to partly melt the surface to deposit pad material on the disc and to cure it.

Different formulations of pad require different amounts of bed in and thus heat.

you ever tried bedding pads in a microwave?

No, but I’ve done something similar in an oven and it worked ver well.

if thats the case luke why do manufacturers not do that before selling them – utter bollox imo

Would you want to pay for the oven that can heat several thousand brake pads?

You need the heat and the pressure to cure the pad

FFS guys – its really simple and all the brake manufacturers agree

luke you clearly are retarded