New spraying facility

Connect, no.122, January - February 2003, p.2

The recent move of TWI's thermal spray laboratory into the new engineering facility has been complemented by the installation of a state-of-the-art dry particle extraction system specifically developed for the HVOF sprayingprocess.

The extraction system features very high flow rates of 20,000m ³/hour and high face velocities to improve the extraction efficiency of high velocity overspray particles and the high heat generated by the HVOF process.

TWI has four commercial HVOF systems: Diamond Jet, JP5000, TopGun and HV wire, which are available to TWI Industrial Members for independent process studies and application development.

The HV wire system has recently been used on TWI's core research programme to look at depositing metallic coatings (aluminium, stainless steel and nickel based alloys) onto steel substrates for corrosion protection. The HV wireprocess is ideally suited to on-site applications as it is simple to operate and light weight.