The Micros are Ciamillo brakes on steroids. These brakes feature an incredible new cam that changes everything from how they setup and perform to how they are maintained. The new Micro cam is an evolution which allows for easier setup, easier accommodation of wide rims, faster changeover from wide to narrow rims, and maintenance of modulation and stroke of the cam through the life of the pads. Learn more about these features below as I go into what each of these means and why this new cam makes the Micro the the most advanced road caliper ever! Over the past decade the rims have steadily risen in width to 29mm. This has posed some challenges to the design because the compact nature of the cam system allowed for only a narrow window of operation. In the past, to accommodate for the variances in rim widths, Ciamillo offered hardware which moved the pads in and out from the caliper arms. This was accomplished originally with three different profile padholders, standard, low-profile, and super-low profile. More recently Ciamillo began supplying super-low profile with all brakes and double sided sphericals to space them out for narrow rims. small-micro-animationThe Micro cam eliminates the need for the sphericals in all but the extreme case of 18 and 19mm rims. With a few turns of a set screw on the top of the Micro cam, the stance of the caliper can be adjusted through a range of 6mm. The setup is simplified to installing the caliper and setting the stance to the preferred 1.5mm gap on each side of the rim via adjustment of the Micro cam set screw. For most situations, the Micro cam can accommodate changeover from wheels used for racing that tend to be wide to wheels used for training which tend to be narrower. When making a rim change with widths greater than 4mm in difference, even conventional brakes may require a release and reattachment of the cable to a different position as the barrel adjuster will not cover the distance.
