The production plant for volume production of thermal spraying powders has been realized. Bigger reactors with a new design for cooling system were designed and tested for Fe, Ni and Ti based powders. The plant and reactor are able to operate under inert atmosphere according to material being processed. A dense powder convey system has been implemented in the powder manufacturing cycle, improving the handling of powders between process steps for intensifying the process efficiency. A new powder classification system (elbow jet air classifier) has been tested in connection with the powder synthesis plant to improve the current capacity by a factor of 3. The production of the novel powder systems has been validated for 3 main families of powders and green cermets: FeCr-TiC, NiCr-TiC and SiC based composites.
The green CerMet powder have been deposited to develop the thermal spraying procedure for coatings. The TiC based coatings show a wear rate close to the one of reference WC-Co and much lower than NiCr-Cr2C3 coating. This material represents a promising alternative for sliding-resistant applications and when combined with Fe matrix it can be applied in components that do not accept the use of Ni matrix as for example parts of machine systems in food contact environment (packaging industry).
The SiC based cermet (SiC-Ti) coatings offer a good resistance to wear at higher temperature (>500°C) where the standard material can not operate due to excessive oxidation. It can be sprayed also by cold spraying resulting in a hard coating with relevant wear resistance properties.
Other coating materials have been developed based on the input of customers’ contacted during the project. The uptake of Titanium based composites from biomedical customer has been faster than expected. This required to duplicate the production line of Boost material to preserve product from cross contamination and ensuring the quality necessary for the application. Other metal composites based on Ni and Copper material have been developed in close collaboration with customers working on sputtering targets application and electrical industry.
MBN have identified the main job shops as primary users of the Boost powders and developed not only customized material but also provided initial spraying service in order to offer a deposition recipe to be used in the first tests. This is a key service interesting for companies in order to propose application examples together with novel coating solutions. Several companies are interested to use the Boost materials for applications in plunger tips for Aluminum die-casting, components for food processing , rolls for sheet metal working, coatings for erosion and cavitation resistance and companies in the energy sector interested in introducing hard coating by cold spraying.
For another kind of customer MBN is working as coating and materials workshop. These companies are operating in various application sectors that ranges from glass industry, to mechanical industry (i.e. producers of motors, pumps), supplier of building and construction materials, automotive and oil and gas. Some of these are already using the thermal spraying technologies for some of their components, some others want to substitute the hard Cr or are looking for new surface engineering solutions. The main applications being developed are concerning mold for glass processing, customize tools for metalworking and coating for braking pads with wear resistant material.
