Hard Chrome Advantages

Industrial hard chrome provides a measurable return on investment by extending product life, improving product performance, reducing down-time, improving OEM warranty-customer satisfaction, and restoring obsolete parts to OEM specs. Industrial hard chrome wears better than hardened steel or electroless nickel platings and offers a wide range of characteristics that no other material on the market possesses.

Extended Product Life

Hydraulics, molds, printing presses, and other OEM equipment use hard chrome to repair, retrofit, and extend equipment life. Industrial hard chrome can also restore and extend the life of obsolete machine parts without OEM replacements.

Improved Lubricity / Abrasion-Resistance

Hard chrome resists abrasion because of its excellent lubricity properties and significantly extends product life. Therefore, hydraulic rams, valves, bearings, pumps, cylinders, and moving parts found in manufacturing and production equipment are extensive users of hard chrome.

Durability, Strength, Hardness

Because hard-chromed products have been proven to last up to ten times longer than non-plated parts in hostile or high demand production environments, many of our customers apply hard chrome to new equipment.

Corrosion Resistance

Industrial hard chrome offers a level of corrosion resistance and protection. Equipment can be plated to produce a bright luster exterior finish which extends equipment life and improves equipment performance in hostile environments such as:

• Brine
• Organic Acids
• Gases
• Oils
• Sugar
• Cyanides
• Fruit Acids
• Molten Glass
• Dairy Products
• Fuels
• Brewing (Malts, Hops)

Electroless Nickel Advantages

Electroless nickel plating has several advantages versus electroplating. Free from flux-density and power supply issues, it provides an even deposit regardless of workpiece geometry, and with the proper pre-plate catalyst, can deposit on non-conductive surfaces.

High Phosphorus Electroless Nickel Plating

High Phosphorous electroless nickel plating offers maximum corrosion resistance to strongly acidic corrosive environments like oil drilling, coal mining and pickling. High phosphorous is the most popular electroless nickel plating choice because steel parts often perform like stainless steel. Electroless nickel does not buildup on edges or ends providing a uniform 100% part thickness and coverage. Electroless nickel plating may allow for substitution of less expensive materials in place of stainless steel alloys or hard-to-machine substrates. Salt spray tests per ASTM B117 repeatedly show that high phosphorus electroless nickel plating outperforms other electroless nickel coatings with 9% or less phosphorus by over 4 to 1.

• Can perform like stainless steel at less cost
• Corrosion resistance
• Exceptional wearability
• 100% uniform thickness / Uniform coverage-both internally & externally / Even coating of threads, grooves, sharp corners, holes & other complex shapes
• Holds close tolerances within .0001
• Soldering Capability
• Eliminates the need for machining
• Cost Effective

USF-Excel

The USF-Excel process yields a deposit with an as-plated hardness of 63 Rockwell C scale.  That’s an increase of nearly 40% over conventional electroless nickel deposits and compares to stress-relieved hard chrome.

Duplex Plating Advantages

Nickel/Nickel • Increased wear-resistance with maximum corrosion protection.

Nickel/Teflon • Maximum corrosion protection with increased lubricity.

Nickel/Chrome • Increased wear-resistance with increased corrosion protection and thicker deposits.

Chrome/Chrome • Maximum wear-resistance with increased micro-crack structure to enhance corrosion protection.

Thermal Plasma Spray Advantages

Hard faced coatings are therefore used extensively in the pump industry. Components that typically receive hard faced coating are: wear rings, shaft sleeves, bushings, impellers, repellers, pistons, shafts, plungers, and valves for enhanced wear or erosion protection.

HVOF is similar in theory to combustion flame spraying, but uses a different torch design that enables the flame to expand when the spray nozzle is activated. This causes a surge in acceleration, which in turn accelerates the mixture particles. When the mixture is released from the nozzle, the velocity of the mixture leads to a very thin and evenly applied coat. The final coating is well-adhered, strong, and dense. In fact, its hardness, corrosion resistance, and overall wear resistance is often superior to plasma spraying. Because of the low temperature of the torch flame, which both melts the powder and propels the coating’s deposition, the mixture is not suited to withstanding high temperatures.

In the early 1980’s Browning and Witfield, using rocket engine technologies, introduced a unique method of spraying metal powders. The technique was referred to as High Velocity Oxy-Fuel (HVOF). The process utilizes a combination of oxygen with various fuel gases including hydrogen, propane, propylene, hydrogen and even kerosene. In the combustion chamber, burning by-products are expanded and expelled outward through an orifice where at very high velocities.

Powders to be sprayed via HVOF are injected axially into the expanding hot gases where they are propelled forward, heated and accelerated onto a surface to form a coating. Gas velocities exceeding Mach 1 have been reported with temperatures approaching 2,300°C (4,172°F). The coupling of inertially driven/highly plasticized particles can achieve coatings approaching that of theoretical density. Disadvantages include low deposition rates and in-flight the oxidation of particles. Future efforts will focus on applying thick coatings and improvements in processes control including in-flight transit time and exposure to atmospheric oxygen.

Our HVOF coating method uses tightly controlled processing to apply an array of coatings, such as tungsten or chromium carbide, in place of hard chrome.

HVOF Thermal Spray Coating benefits are:

• Reduced oxide content
• Reduced solutioning of carbides
• Neutral or compressive stress
• Smoother sprayed surface
• True coating uniformity
• Tensile band strength >10,000 psi.