I think that some confusion is at play here:
1 Bigdog already stated in his first posting that the brake is fed from 24 V DC. So there is no need to tell him to check if the brake is separated from the PWM motor voltage. I really hope that the rectifier is a full wave one. A half wave rectifier would certainly result in noise and bad performance.
2 Bigdog does not say if the 24 V is smoothed or not, but it is plausible to think that it is derived from a full-wave rectifier (see #1) and then you do not need any catch diode, aka free-wheeling diode. They are only needed to catch the overvoltage when you break the DC. The noise is present during operation, so a catch diode is of no importance with respect to that problem. Nor are MOVs and RC circuits. And it is not important at all to place the diode or RC network close to the coil. It works well wherever they are connected to the circuit. Do not confuse them with bypass capacitors.
3 There is some talk about DC blocking. I think that those postings miss the goal by 100 %. The brake coil shall have as much DC component as it can get. Blocking DC and letting the AC component through is doing just the opposite.
If you really need to filter the DC voltage, a parallel capacitor - say 1000+ uF and 50 or 63 V - will do the job. But that is usually not needed since the time constant of a DC coil usually is in the 100 - 1000 ms region and that will smooth the current better than a capacitor will. A capacitor will also increase the voltage by some 40 % and that will problably make the coil run very hot.
I think that you should check the current waveform with a DC clamp and an oscilloscope. That will help you differentiate between an electrical and a mechanical problem. If the current (not voltage!) is reasonably smooth (less than 20 - 30 % ripple) and if it is within rated value +/-10 %, then the problem is not electrical.