Innovative short arc technology is gaining high interest for low temperature joining strategies exemplified by the soldering of zinc coated steels and the joining of steel/aluminum hybrid joints. Controlled short arc allows on one hand a very low heat input in the component, so that melting of the base material can be limited. On the other hand it is possible to use low temperature melting filler wires, as for example zinc wire. New development in controlling short arc have been performed in the last year and reached its maturity for welding production (e.g. Cold Metal Transfer (CMT) of Fronius or Cold Arc in EWM). In both cases the short arc is controlled after drop transfer. One way to perform control is a high dynamic wire feed, which allows high dynamic retracting wire end. Another possibility represents a new type of highly dynamic inverter switching, combined with very fast digital current control, to reduce drastically the peak power in the arc when the short arc is reignited. The consequence of this is a no-sputter, low heat processing procedure. The arc is considerably colder due to the power reduction on re-ignition, which means that a lower heat input is possible.

The effect of hardware on operating parameters and the resultant coating are qualitatively known; however, the quantitative effects have not been well defined. This study quantitatively characterizes particle temperature and velocity for the Sulzer-Metco 6P oxy-acetylene torch with 3 different nozzles and 3 air caps and also, the Alamo PG-550 then relates those data to particle diagnostics, deposition efficiency and coating microstructure. Both torches were evaluated using statistically designed experiments where the process inputs of oxy-fuel ratio, total combustible gas flow, and standoff distance were varied. Both torches can access similar regions of particle temperature - particle velocity space. Increasing total combustible gas flow increased particle velocity with little effect on particle temperature. Increasing oxy-fuel ratio decreased particle temperature with little effect on particle velocity. Higher particle velocity and particle temperature conditions yielded denser, less porous coatings. Flame cooling air caps increase the particle speed while decreasing particle temperature. Nozzles which inject powder directly into the flame jets significantly increase particle temperature as compared to nozzles which do not. Deposition efficiency is shown to not only be affected by particle temperature and particle velocity where hotter and faster usually increase efficiency, but is also dependent on the distribution of particles within the plume.

In order to develop a functional film deposition process with high deposition rate, as a basic study, deposition of zinc oxide film by thermal plasma CVD (TPCVD) in the air was carried out. As ingredient, working gas and substrate, ethanol diluted zinc acetate solution, Ar and 430 stainless steel were used. As for deposition condition, Ar gas flow rate was fixed at 20SLM, deposition distance (distance between substrate surface and nozzle outlet of plasma torch) was varied 50 to 200 mm, zinc acetate concentration in the ingredient was varied 20 to 50 vol%, and ingredient feed rate was varied 30 to 200 ml/h. Consequently, with varying deposition distance, not only crystallized film but also amorphous film could be deposited. In the case of crystallized film, photo-catalytic properties could be confirmed in the films by methylene blue decoloration testing and wettability testing. Besides, in this case, film structure could be changed from lamellar to columnar by decreasing zinc acetate/ ethanol ratio. From these results, this process was found to have high potential for high rate functional film deposition process conducted in the air.

Very low pressure plasma spraying (LPPS) is the objective of numerous studies for the past years. However, numerical simulations and experiments revealed some difficulties such as the presence of successive expansions and constrictions of the plasma jet that has an influence on the deposition efficiency and on the coating structure. Optimization of the plasma gun is thus required and the use of bell-contoured De Laval nozzle extensions seems particularly promising. In this paper, new developments concerning the use of an in-house bell-contoured nozzle extension are presented and both numerical calculations and experiments were performed.

Thermal Spray Toolkit is a developing toolkit for thermal spray applications based on RobotStudio™ software which is developed by Asea Brown Bovrie Ltd (ABB). This toolkit is composed of several functional modules including PathKit, ProfileKit and MonitorKit. PathKit provides numerous methods to create trajectory on different surfaces including square and rectangular surfaces, round surfaces, curved surfaces and rotating workpieces. ProfileKit permits coating surface analysis by importing a surface profile and it can also guide users to select the right spray parameters according to specific materials. MonitorKit can capture the robot displacement in real-time during the spray process. Thermal Spray Toolkit is a toolkit developed to apply robotics in thermal spray applications whose reliability has been confirmed by the experimental results.

Dynamic Metallization (DYMET) process is developed to produce thick aluminum, copper, zinc, nickel, cobalt, lead, and tin coatings on any metal or ceramic substrates. It consists of a surface treatment process in which a mixture of solid metal and ceramic powders are accelerated by compressed air at pressures between 0.5 and 0.8 MPa.

The industrial use of cold spraying started in 2001 with the introduction of the Kinetic 3000 Cold Spray System from CGT. The heater is designed for a 24-hour operation and has proved its reliability in several installations. The powder feeder can run at the high feed rate of the Kinetic 3000 and is easy to operate. The nozzle design changed from a simple double cone-type to the latest MOC shape. The presentation will give an overview of the state-of-the-art technology in cold spraying.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has the oldest Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) shop for aircraft in the world (more than 80 years old). The company’s philosophy in all areas, including thermal spray, has always been to pursue the latest innovations and to maintain well-equipped facilities with state-of-the-art processes, equipment and materials for performing repairs. In the area of thermal spray, the latest procurement is a state-of-the-art unique cabinet with a high enthalpy plasma spray process. This new cabinet and new plasma spray process provides up-to-date technology for applying thermal spray coatings on aircraft engines. In this paper, experiences and the latest results obtained using this system to deposit various types of coatings used on aircraft will be reported.

Two new inner contours of de Laval nozzles (V70, V21) for F4 torch, which have already successfully been established for the Atmospheric Plasma Spraying (APS) are investigated for application under Vacuum Plasma Spraying conditions (VPS). Studies have been performed with regard to power efficiency, sound level and arc voltage fluctuations as well as coating quality and deposition efficiency for use of CoNiCrAlY powder as feedstock material. The results are compared to the commonly used standard VPS nozzle. CFD calculations and enthalpy probe measurements of plasma gas velocity and temperature distribution in the centreline of the supersonic plasma jets are carried out in order to get insight in the basic dependencies.

For 20 years now, the HVOF-method has been an industrially-established process for the application of hard-metal coatings to prevent wear phenomena from happening. A successful application combines the typical process parameters, conditions of materials and, above all, constructive frame conditions. In the following, we will present investigations for coating uneven outlines/contours such as edges, cavities or uneven surfaces. Furthermore, constructive frame conditions will be deduced from these and compared to our practical experience. The distribution of the layer thickness and its accessibility with the spray jet will be discussed as well. Here, we will have a closer look on which mechanical properties the basic substance has regarding hardness

Although thermal spraying technique is used in many industries, it suffers from several problems. For example, the hardness of the coatings is lower than that of sintered material for the incompleted cohesiveness. An yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) laser was used during HVOF spraying to improve the properties of the applied coating. Several carbide powders were used as thermal spray materials, and stainless steel (SUS304) was used as substrate. Coatings were sprayed by hybrid spraying method, which was combined HVOF spraying with YAG laser. The hardness of coatings sprayed by hybrid spraying was higher, and the weight loss in a blast-erosion test was smaller than that of coatings applied by HVOF spraying only. The particles deposited in the coatings obtained by hybrid spraying were very fine. Laser irradiation to the HVOF flame improve the adhesion strength between particles and the deposition of fine carbide particles in the coating. It was considered that mechanism of coating strengthening in hybrid spraying was resulted from strengthening of cohesiveness by heating effect and decreasing of porosity by flattening effect according to observation results of Ni splats sprayed by hybrid spraying method.

Today, more than ever the greatest progresses are reached in the field of microprocessor technique. Electronic devices are becoming smaller and smaller and showing at the same time higher performance. This fact has an effect on equipment control in mechanical engineering. No equipment can be used economically without PLC and PC. Moreover, it is impossible to build one without using them. Since a long time electronic components like PLC are considerable reasonable in pricing compared to supposing simple mechanical or electro mechanical systems. At the same time higher recommendations are expected from operator and service persons. Thermal Spray guns and systems are in a steady further development. Beside the request for high power systems there is a demand coming up for smaller and more affordable systems. Nevertheless, high power plasma guns are also to be focused on due to the fact that there is still the demand for ceramic coatings on big components.

A special bi-anode plasma torch has been developed for elongating the arc length and obtaining the arc with a fixed length. The relations between the arc voltage and the arc current were investigated for different gas compositions, and the effect of the gas flow rate on the arc voltage was also studied for the pure Ar plasma. The results show that for the pure Ar plasma, the arc voltage had a dropping characteristic for an arc with instable length and a rising characteristic arc voltage for an arc with fixed length, but for Ar-H 2 plasma or Ar-N 2 plasma, the arc voltage always had dropping characteristic. Increasing the gas flow rate will enhance the arc voltage both for an instable and fixed length arc.

This paper is devoted to the study of coatings elaborated by a process permitting Air Plasma Spraying (A.P.S.) of finely structured ceramic coatings. This process mainly consists in injecting in a d.c. plasma jet, a ceramic suspension containing sub-micron ceramic particles. Coating characteristics are close to those observed in P.E.C.V.D., but with a faster elaboration rate (. 15 µm/m2.h) and, the possibility to produce a wide range of thicknesses (1 < e < 100 µm). This paper is aimed at producing the Yttria Stabilized Zirconia electrolyte (Y.S.Z.) of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells with a thickness of 5 to 30 µm. Previous studies of this process have been devoted to the influence of the spray parameters on the structure of Y.S.Z. splats collected and have allowed determining some well adapted working conditions. The new stage described in this paper, is related to the study of the growth of Yttria Stabilized Zirconia coatings and the influence of different parameters such as the ceramic particle size distributions contained in the suspension and the heat flux imposed to the surface of the substrate and successive passes during the coating elaboration.

Due to the low running costs, high spray rates and efficiency wire arc spraying has become one of the most important thermal spray technology, especially as a tool for coating large areas with high deposition rates. The main applications are corrosion and wear protection of large structures, such as coating with zinc for anodic corrosion protection or with high-alloyed chromium steel for longer surface service time. Disadvantages of the arc spraying process are on the one hand that only electrically conductive materials can be processed and on the other hand the higher oxygen content within the coating compared to other thermal spray processes such as HVOF or APS. Innovative and flexible power supply systems were developed for arc welding technologies in the last decade. Today power supply devices with new features for arc wire spraying technologies are present at the market, too. Particle flow conditions as well as coating properties such as morphology and oxide content can be optimized by changing the current generator characteristic and modulating the energy input for example by pulsing the spray voltage up to 500 Hz. As a consequence of the power modulation the oxidation of the particles can be reduced by a lower heat input based on lower average spray voltage. Investigations in order to influence the droplet behaviour and the coating microstructure using dynamic current generators were performed for zinc, aluminium and copper. The effect of different modulation frequencies, pulse lengths and pulse voltages are presented.

The primary purpose of grit blasting for thermal spray applications is to ensure a strong mechanical bond between the substrate and the coating by the enhanced roughening of the substrate material. This study presents statistically designed experiments that were accomplished to investigate the effect of abrasives on roughness for A36/1020 steel. The experiments were conducted using a Box statistical design of experiment (SDE) approach. Three grit blasting parameters and their effect on the resultant substrate roughness were investigated. These include blast media, blast pressure, and working distance. The substrates were characterized for roughness using surface profilometry. These attributes were correlated with the changes in operating parameters. Twin-Wire Electric Arc (TWEA) coatings of aluminum and zinc/aluminum were deposited on the grit-blasted substrates. These coatings were then tested for bond strength. Bond strength studies were conducted utilizing a portable adhesion tester following ASTM standard D4541.

Induction plasma deposition has been applied in spray coating and near-net shape forming since long. In this paper, we present a few typical results in applying induction plasma spraying technique to fabricate the near-net shape tungsten components. With various shape, very thick, and large surface of W parts were fabricated, the microstructure in the bulk is uniform, and the density is greater than 98% theoretical density.

The technique was examined to prevent errors during thermal spraying by setting up a spray on-line monitoring system (Spray Watch-2i System) at the starting position in the production line using plasma spraying, and monitoring the characteristics of the particles in the plasma flame between each spraying cycle. The tests were carried out with several spray conditions, changing the gas flow, and the arc current. The state of the plasma flame was measured as the velocity, temperature and flux density of the flying particles. The coating properties were then evaluated by measuring the dielectric breakdown test. It has been found that the evaluation result of the coating correlates very well with the monitoring results of the flame particle characteristics. Therefore there is a possibility that monitoring the state of the particle characteristics within the flame during spraying can control the coating characteristics comparatively easily.

With the goal to improve the plasma spraying technique a considerable number of plasma gun types using different physical principles have been developed in the past. In this paper for conventional DC discharge plasma torches widely used in industry, some aspects of operation as arc fluctuations and non-symmetric plasma jets are discussed. Different construction principles with single or multiple electrodes as well as with one-piece or cascaded nozzles are compared. Finally a new torch concept is presented.

Direct current (DC) plasma spraying, in atmosphere (APS) or under vacuum condition (VPS), is a standard spraying technology to produce high performance coatings for important applications. Although inductive coupled (IC) plasma torches have been known since the early sixties, its use for industrial coating production remained limited due to the static gun requirement. An adequate substrate manipulation opens up the IC-spraying for its practical use. A VPS system was realized which combines IC- with DC-spraying. The potential of this new facility is highlighted by coatings of W and Yb 2 O 3 . The key parameters to achieve an optimized coating structure are explained.