Custom Electromagnetic Clutch and Brake Design

Since 1984, SEPAC Inc. has supported clients in diverse industries with innovative, quality products and custom engineering and manufacturing services. We specialize in designing high-performance electromagnetic clutches and brakes for mission-critical applications and some of the world’s harshest environments. SEPAC products can handle extreme pressures in subsea oil exploration or zero-gravity environments for aerospace projects. Other common uses of our clutches and brakes include surgical robots that require superior accuracy as well as defense applications demanding proven motion control.

Learn more about our wide-ranging, repeatable, and reliable industrial automation solutions, and how SEPAC can support you in your operations with electromagnetic clutch design and electromagnetic brake design.

Custom Clutches & Brakes

Prototyping Services

Special Considerations

Custom Design Tech

Manufacturing Process

Design FAQs

Engineering Your Custom Electromagnetic Clutches and Brakes with SEPAC

At SEPAC, our exceptionally talented engineering and manufacturing staff strive to help you achieve your design goals on spec, on budget, and on time.

Our typical customer requires a clutch or brake that isn’t offered as a standard product. That’s where we excel — designing, prototyping, and manufacturing a new product to meet the requirements of demanding applications that other clutch and brake companies can’t achieve.

Our expert engineers will design and build your prototype or product while providing support from start to finish. We’ll work closely with you, making recommendations to improve part performance, reduce production costs, and expedite the overall design process.

Common Modifications We Offer

We like to say that we specialize in specials. Our team is dedicated to your success, and we have the expertise in designing to meet extreme performance requirements. We can assist you with just about any customized or modified assembly that you require. We’ll optimize your clutch or brake design to best suit the needs of your unique application. Some of the most common clutch and brake modifications that our customers request include:

Bore/spline shapes and sizes

Coatings for environmental considerations

Enclosures

Coil windings for various voltages

High-temperature windings

Friction materials for holding or dynamic stopping

Torque capacities

Mounting configurations

Pulleys, gears, and special integrated hubs

Manual release mechanisms

Sensors

Bores and splines are available in a variety of shapes and sizes to suit different application requirements. For example, involute splines offer better sliding fit and closer tolerances.

Many clutches and brakes come with corrosion-resistant coatings. However, you can also choose from a selection of custom coatings, enclosures, and construction materials to accommodate specific application environments.

We provide special integrated drive hubs and enclosures with sensors and manual release mechanisms upon request.

Coil windings are critical components in electrical and electromagnetic devices. The application in which you’ll use them determines their ideal shape. We also configure our coil windings to suit your voltage requirements. We can incorporate redundant wiring so that, in the event of a failure, your electromagnetic equipment will continue to function.

We can also customize coil windings to withstand higher temperatures.

We manufacture spring-engaged friction brakes (SEBs) for applications that involve frequent dynamic stopping. While these types of systems naturally cause wear in friction components over time, our team can find the right material to match your requirements for performance and service life.

Our engineering team can tailor the design of a clutch or brake of a certain size to meet most torque capacities. For example, adding self-locking teeth, changing the magnetic force on magnetically engaged units, increasing the spring force of spring-engaged units, or raising the number of friction discs or teeth can all help to improve torque capacity.

Clutches and brakes are available with several mounting configuration options. The mounting mechanism you use depends on the design of the system in which it will be installed. For example, robotic technology often employs clutches and brakes mounted via large through bores.

We offer specialized pulleys, gears, and integrated hubs to handle unique or highly specific clutch and brake applications.

For applications that require manual release capabilities, we offer modified designs and custom assemblies.

We can customize the sensors in clutches and brakes to suit different application requirements.

We do our best to work within your schedule, which might mean expediting the turnaround for your prototype or helping you bring your product to market before your competitors.

Prototyping Services

As so many of our clutch and brake products are custom projects, the SEPAC team strongly recommends prototyping. This will help you ensure that the look and functionality of the prototype match your expectations for the final product before proceeding with a full production run.

The prototyping process begins when you submit our application data form with a request for prototyping, which provides us with the initial specification details for your project. After evaluating the form and requesting any additional information, the SEPAC Application Engineering team will work closely with you to develop a prototype design. We will generate a quote for the prototype once you have approved the design and all product dimensions and details.

For any questions about the costs involved with any prototyping redesign or rework after design approval, refer to our prototype policy.

Learn More

Special Considerations for Custom Electromagnetic Clutches and Brakes

Customers typically come to us with very specific application needs. If you’re looking for assistance designing and engineering a custom clutch or brake, contact our team early in the development cycle. We’ll work with you to find a custom solution, walking you through the process from rapid prototyping to calibration and controlled production.

The following are some design and build considerations to ensure that your component will meet your performance objectives, fit your development timeline, and suit your budget.

Heat Dissipation

Cycle rate or frequency
Referred inertia
Relative shaft speeds
Ambient temperatures
Heat sink
Oil or airflow rate

Environmental Conditions

Dust
Abrasive particles
Corrosion
Vibration
Shock
Pressure
Vacuum
Altitude
Humidity

Torque Requirements

Shaft speed
Dynamic vs. static torque

Other Considerations

Operating in oil or dry
System resilience
Over-run speed
Necessary lifespan
Available space
Service and safety factors

Custom Electromagnetic Clutch and Brake Design Tech

In addition to our background in electromagnetic clutch and brake design, our team is experienced in working with multiple modern design programs and quality inspection equipment. Advanced technology like SOLIDWORKS for computer modeling and design and COMSOL for magnetic simulation enable us to create new designs and modify existing ones to ensure the final component we deliver fully complies with your specifications and standards.

We utilize advanced inspection methods to determine and verify whether our components meet your needs. The equipment we employ includes two coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), a programmable optical comparator, and over 600 calibrated gages. These tools allow us to meet virtually any inspection requirement. Combined with our comprehensive inspection procedures and LEAN principles, we can provide you with complete, accurate, and thorough inspection reports. We also build our test stands to ensure that the products we develop meet your requirements.

Custom Electromagnetic Clutch and Brake Design and Manufacturing Process

From design and prototyping to full-scale production, the SEPAC team will be with you every step of the process to help you navigate the above design and build considerations.

Our Process

To provide comprehensive product solutions and reliable quality, a typical project will take the following steps:

Application Information Interview

Specification Review

Budgetary Proposal

Product Design Phase

Formal Proposal

Manufacturing & Testing

Delivery

Our Experience

For 40 years, SEPAC has designed and manufactured clutches and brakes for a wide range of industries, including aerospace, defense, energy, healthcare, robotics, and more. Our valued customers include such well-known companies as:

Moog
General Electric
Honeywell
Boeing
Lockheed Martin
BAE
Raytheon
Northrop Grumman
L3Harris
Johnson & Johnson
Schlumberger

Quality From the Start

We are an AS9100- and ISO 9001-certified operation. Regardless of your industry or specifications, our motion control products are carefully designed, engineered, and manufactured to high quality standards at every level of the business. We believe the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of our quality system is the path toward continually meeting or exceeding exacting requirements and your high expectations.

Custom Electromagnetic Clutch and Brake Design FAQs

Still have questions? Below are some of the common queries that we receive from potential customers.

What if none of the standard clutches or brakes I see in your catalog are quite what I need?

At SEPAC, specialization is our specialty! We’ll collaborate with you to gain an understanding of your needs, then modify one of our current designs or start from scratch to deliver a clutch or brake that fulfills your requirements. It’s also possible that we might have something not currently included in our product catalog that would suit. Reach out to us with your specifications, and we’ll help you find or design the right product solution.

How about mountings and integrations? Can you customize those as well?

Absolutely. We can custom-design mountings and integrations to optimize space and fit your budget.

By how much can an application's load exceed the clutch or brake's rated torque capacity as noted in your catalog?

Many factors affect a clutch or brake’s torque capacity. Depending on the application, you may be able to safely exceed the torque capacity multiple times over, or the maximum torque capacity may only be just over what it’s rated for. That said, our team can modify our clutch and brake designs to provide you with a product for which the maximum and minimum holding capacities are close together.

Can you make adjustments to the product design to hold at a higher torque?

Yes! By making certain adjustments, our engineering team can address your needs for higher torque. Depending on the clutch and brake size or unit type, this might involve:

Raising the amount of spring force for units that are spring-engaged
Increasing the magnetic force for units that are magnetically engaged
Including additional friction discs within friction disc units
Adding teeth with self-locking capabilities in tooth units

What type of clutch or brake achieves the highest torque capacity for its size?

With at least twice the torque of any other clutch or brake that’s comparable in size, the tooth clutch/brake is your best bet for high torque.

Is it possible to incorporate a sensor within my custom clutch or brake that will indicate whether the product is disengaged or engaged?

Sure! For those times when sensing the load transmittal isn’t sufficient and you need definitive reassurance, we can install an inductive proximity switch or related sensor to indicate when the clutch or brake is fully disengaged or engaged.

How do I decrease heat generation and power consumption in my clutch or brake?

You can usually address these concerns by using a two-stage power supply. This is because the current that a spring-engaged clutch or brake needs to hold its position is typically lower than the power necessary for the unit to engage.

The environment in which I'll be using my clutch or brake is unique. Can you accommodate me?

Our background in customization means that it’s very likely we can design a clutch or brake to function in your specific environmental conditions. Reach out to our team with the specifics, and we’ll help find a solution.

Choose SEPAC for Your Custom Electromagnetic Brake and Clutch Design

Clients in industries ranging from robotics and aerospace to medical and energy depend on SEPAC clutches and brakes to be of the utmost reliability and quality. For that reason, we hold our products and services to the highest quality standards to meet and exceed your expectations in everything we do. Our company offers a full range of in-house capabilities to deliver turnkey, custom solutions, with services that include design, engineering, prototyping, custom manufacturing, inspections, and quality control.

If you need custom electromagnetic clutches or brakes, the experts at SEPAC have got you covered. To learn more about our custom capabilities or discuss your project specifications with our experts, contact us or request a quote today. You can also fill out our application data form to start the custom design process right away.