Abstract
A high efficiency single electrode (HESE) version of the popular TriplexPro Plasma Gun (Sulzer Metco, Westbury, NY) has been developed and evaluated. A single electrode gun has the advantage that in most cases it can be directly or simply retrofitted to any existing conventional plasma spray system. Three electrode cascade guns like the TriplexPro platform require a unique power supply and control configuration. The design of newly developed single electrode plasma gun was based upon the TriplexPro platform and retains many of the features that contribute to the guns high efficiency characteristics, in particular the cascaded arc configuration. A study was conducted to compare the performance of the newly developed HESE gun against a conventional single electrode design. Factors examined include: voltage stability; in flight particle characterization; coating properties for selected materials and spray spot size.
