Wheel manufacturing is an art and, the more experienced the artists, the more polished products you get. Manufacturer: Choosing a well-revered manufacturer is important for an aftermarket alloy wheel. These have impressive strength and are extremely light, but it still lags behind the mold form forged wheels in terms of rigidity and flexing properties. In these wheels, the grain structure is pre-defined and doesn't change with the wheel's shape. Machine forging makes use of a CNC mill to cut out the wheel from the chunk of metal. This provides for greater strength and improved flexing properties. This helps the alloy's internal grain structure and fiber flow to adapt to the wheel's shape. Mold forging requires a lot of brute force and involves the chunk of aluminum being pressed using a 10,000-ton forging machine. There are again two processes in which a forged wheel is manufactured - mold-form forging and machine forging. As the name suggests, these wheels are forged out of a single chunk of aluminum billet which also means that it requires less alloy content to achieve the targeted strength. These wheels end up being about 25% lighter than cast wheels without any changes in size or shape.įorged Wheels: Forged wheels are the priciest and the strongest of this bunch. This genius method stretches the metal and thus realigns the structure of aluminum allow which improves its tensile strength and strengthened crystalline structure. This is done while pressing rollers against the rim, to pull it outwards into its final width. This starts with a pre-mature cast rim that is loaded into a machine that spins it. Apart from this, both methods don't bring about any major changes to the tensile strength or crystalline structure.įlow Formed Wheels: These are wheels made using a hybrid method that puts it in between the cheaper cast wheels and the top-of-the-line forged wheels. Instead of filling into a mold from the top, this method injects the molten metal from the bottom, effectively eliminating the chances of bubble formation. This is where the low-pressure casting method comes in. But there is a scope of air bubbles being formed that can affect the rigidity of the wheels. Gravity cast, as mentioned earlier, make use of gravity as you fill up molten aluminum in mold. But hardcore fanatics will know that there are two types of casting processes for wheels as well - Gravity cast (the old school one) and Low-pressure cast. The root formula is to fill up a mold and let it cool. There are 3 major types of aftermarket car wheels and are based on the manufacturing processes involved.Ĭast Wheels: Casting is the most common method of manufacturing custom alloy wheels and these are the cheapest aftermarket wheels available right now.
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