Wear Resistant Coatings

There are many types of wear mechanisms including adhesive, abrasive, erosive, cavitation, and fretting. In many cases wear can occur from a combination of these mechanisms. Understanding the factors that are causing wear to occur is very important to engineering the proper wear resistant coating solution. Fortunately with the ability of thermal spray to work with an almost limitless number of materials, a well engineered coating can usually be produced to solve even some of the most complex wear issues.

When engineering a wear resistant coating, Thermal Spray Technologies uses its strong expertise in materials engineering and its strength of understanding of the processes of thermal spray. The combination of this knowledge provides application specific solutions to our customers wear problems.

Coating Materials

Some of the more common materials Thermal Spray Technologies uses to provide wear resistance include ceramics such as carbides and metal oxides. Carbide coatings are produced in the form of cermets (ceramic and metal) they provide hardness and wear resistance similar to solid sintered carbide components like carbide metal cutting tools. Metal oxides such as chromium oxide are also very hard and are very resistant to chemical attack so they can be an ideal solution when wear and corrosion are both present. Several metals and even some plastics are also used to provide wear resistance.

Materials

Wear resistant coatings can be deposited on several different materials using thermal spray. Almost all metals can be coated and even many heat sensitive materials such as carbon fiber composites and some plastics can be successfully coated.

Examples

Highly complex components such as jet engine compressor blades are coated for wear resistance. Even simple parts such as bolts used in agricultural combines are coated with carbide coatings to greatly extend life of the bolts and prevent machine damage from the detachment of high speed rotating parts.