What is brake glazing? How do you prevent it?

DSDP Don wrote:
No I'm not confusing anything. You read a definition of glazing and believe it only applies to high heat situations wear things melt. If you lightly drag two items together, they build heat, but not always to the level of melting things. The light application of brakes causes a slight heating issue and will polish/glaze the brakes. After this occurs, dust gets between them and cause the squeal.

Some day, take a look at a freshly turned brake rotor or drum. They're NOT smooth, because they're cut with a machine. Put ten thousand miles on them and they're as smooth as glass. This is wear and glazing.

You're having a difficult time understanding this because you're laser locked on one definition of glazing.

Here is an example, maybe not a good one, but you might be able to relate to....When you buy a donut, you can get plain or glazed. What does that mean, one is just a rough cake surface and the other has a light glazing of sugar that's not burned on/on.

Many definitions of glazing...here is just one...."to lose abrasive quality through polishing of the surface from wear". This isn't a difficult topic, you're just being too literal!

I don't know what to tell you except that polished brakes are a good thing. Look it up on Google. You can find videos on how to polish your rotors and lots of stores that sell polished rotors. You use the term "polish/glaze" in your post as if it's the same thing and it's simply not. But I may be wrong. I don't fully understand all of this and that's why I've posted the question.

So if you can post some links supporting the idea that lightly using the brakes without building excessive heat causes glazing, I would love to see them and try and understand the principles behind such a thing.

I found an interesting article on Brake Myths.

"There are two types of friction at play here, abrasive friction and adherent fiction. Abrasive friction literally breaks the bonds of the crystalline structure of the pad and even the cast iron of the disc, creating heat. Mohs Law tells us that the harder material (ideally the disc) wears away at the softer material of the pad as the two materials rub together. Picture a sanding pad against a board. Same concept.

Adherent friction is where some of the pad material literally adheres to the opposing surface as they s****e by each other, creating a thin and (ideally) even layer of pad material on the face of the rotor. That material can continually break its bonds and transfer from surface to surface back and forth between the disc and the pad, continually breaking and reforming like they were bouncing across political parties between elections (heyoo!)."

This is what I think a normal, functioning rotor looks like:

http://img.autobytel.com/car-reviews/autobytel/105716-identifying-weird-car-noises/bigstock-Car-wheel-brake-rusty-disc-wit-61080689.jpg

I wouldn't call it polished or glazed. Just looks like every rotor I've ever seen.