A mirror without glass?

That sounds about as daring as a tire without rubber. But the ingenious heads of motogadget have made the impossible possible. Thanks to cutting edge technologies, their high-tech mirrors are more robust, lighter and slimmer than ever before.

So what is their secret?

“For us, innovation is simply the only way” says co-founder Garrit Keller, underlining motogadget’s self-image. As the head of development, he is extremely interested in sounding out technical limits. It is his very personal drive that shapes the entire company. The new Metalmirror mirrors without glass are the best proof of this.

"No glass, no problems. A simple but completely new design approach."

Conventional motorcycle mirrors are rather heavy and sometimes not very elegant. The mirror surface made of glass is a real Achilles verse, can jump out of the frame or break. In the event of a fall, the glass even poses a risk of injury. The aim of the new motogadget mirrors called m.view is to avoid all these disadvantages by using state-of-the-art production methods. And indeed, the ten different m.view models are completely different from other mirrors. Because their aluminium body, milled from solid material, itself becomes a mirror surface!
The result is a weightless design without a rim or frame. The mirror becomes particularly thin and light.

No glass, no problems. A simple but completely new design approach. One inevitably wonders why nobody came up with this idea before. But when you look into production, the question answers itself: The consistent renunciation of glass requires extremely precise manufacturing with extremely high expenditure and specially trained specialists who monitor every production shift. In a patented process, motogadget has succeeded in combining technologies from space travel, science and the semiconductor industry. The m.view production hall is therefore more like a clinical laboratory. Artificial light shines onto clean work surfaces, blowers keep man-high machines cooled. Computer displays are operated by experienced employees, it smells like chemical cleaning agents.

The result of years of research and testing is a multi-stage, complex manufacturing process that begins with the production of mirror blanks. Thick, 2 meter long aluminium rods are cut into thin slices on a band saw and then machined in a CNC milling machine. 90% of the material is removed and later recycled. After anodizing and marking with a laser beam, the edge and the metal mirror surface are milled over again.

Then the “ultracut” takes place. A natural diamond with 0.5 carat removes an ultra-fine layer (0.001 mm) from the spherical mirror surface – less than 2% of a human
hair. The chip itself is so light that it floats almost weightlessly in the air. The ultra-precision machine required for this achieves a roughness of 0.000002 mm. It is responsible for the fact that the metal surface reflects at all. The term of a mirror-smooth surface does not come now times from by chance. A normal milling machine would be hopelessly overwhelmed in view of the necessary precision in the nanometer range. The custom-made machine for m.view production therefore has air-bearing spindles, hydrostatic axes and vibration-free machine beds made of solid granite. The device weighs several tons.

Cleaning and final assembly seem almost simple due to the innovative technologies, but speak for the manufactory part of the production. motogadget mirrors from the heart of the capital are attached to arms made of CNC-milled, anodized aluminum and fixed by hand using stainless steel screws. Precise ball joints allow a comfortable, stable adjustment later on. The motogadget staff protects the mirrors with a protective film and the packaging until they are used.

View the entire article by Motogadget HERE