Since 1993 education and training guidelines and as well as qualification standards of thermal spray personnel have been created step by step by the European Committees of EWF (European Federation of Welding, Joining and Cutting) and CEN (European Committee or Standardisation). ISO personnel qualification and quality management standards result together with the EWF education and training guidelines in a sound QM-system, which meets the increased demands of trade and industry of high quality sprayed coating. Meanwhile about 13 ETS courses were held at the German Welding Institute. Also ETS courses have been held in Finland. The EWF education and training course of the ETSS European Thermal Spraying Specialist will be offered by the German Welding Institute in Munich - SLV München - for the eleventh time in October 2008. DIN EN ISO 9000 series are commonly valid, that is why the product related quality management EN ISO 14922 ”Quality Requirements of Thermally Sprayed Structures, part 1 - 4” was created. This standard series puts principles for the fitness of the purchaser and of his spray production. The QM-system that was established by the GTS e.V.– the Association of Thermal Sprayers – was pioneer and does an excellent job concerning its requirements. The QM-standards are also involve the important ISO standards of the Thermal Spraying Co-ordinator and the Approval Testing of Thermal Sprayers.

Each year a large number of papers are given at the International Conference. During your time at the conference, you will have the opportunity to hear of the latest developments in technology. Some of the presentations will be done by some of the best in the Thermal Spray Industry doing research and others from equipment and material suppliers. There are others, done by suppliers, who actually are doing the thermal spray applications on a large variety of parts. However even though the R & D papers have a lot of good scientific information a large amount of it is non usable in the industry. So, who should be changing directions?

In this study, interconnect layer of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) was built up from spray-dried La 0.6 Sr 0.4 Co 0.2 Fe 0.8 O 3-δ (LSCF) and blended LSCF-Ag through atmospheric plasma spraying (APS). Microstructure and phase of each coating was analyzed through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) respectively. Furthermore, bond strength, micro-hardness, thermal cycle test and oxidation test were performed and compared. The coatings prepared from spray-dried LSCF have higher porosity and cracks at inter-particle boundaries. However, the coatings with silver addition presented reduced cracks and porosity due to relatively high ductility of silver, resulting in higher mechanical properties.