Thermal Spray Training

Sample
l Outline
l

2011

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 Introduction
• Sauer Engineering
• John
J h PP. S
Sauer P
P.E.
E
– Principal Consultant and Trainer
– 20 yrs in Thermal Spray
• 20 yrs in Coating Evaluation In conjunction with
IMR Test Labs
• 12 years in Coating Processing
– Can understand and train/consult both in the lab
abs on the spray floor
• Other trainers with experience as needed

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 Philosophy
y

• Theory training in classroom

• Hands-on
d training
i i ini the
h booth
b h

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 Time Schedule

• 3 days of theory
• 2 days of hands-on (two sessions)

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 Goals

• What are your expectations??

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 Outline
• General theory of Thermal Spray (TS)
– Low velocity combustion
– Plasma
– Wire
– HVOF
– Other

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 Outline
Grit Blast and Cleaning Equipment
• Cleaning
– How?
– With what?
• What type?
– Air pressure control
• Grit size
– Control of grit
– Filtering
Filt i
• Surface roughness

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 Outline

• Plasma
– General Overall Design
– Create a plasma
– Different types of gases-combinations
– M
Many diff
differentt gun designs
d i
– Control of process
– Diff
Different types off injection
i j i
– Powder delivery

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 Hands-on
System Maintenance
• HVOF Gun
• HVOF Gun Console
• Powder Feeder
• Rebuilding of gun and when to rebuild
• Rebuilding of Powder Feeder Hopper and when to rebuild
• V i d equipment/system
Varied i t/ t issues
i that
th t can arise
i
• Powder feeder issues
• Gun and Feeder Hoses and Cables
• Spark Igniter and Flame Out Detector

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 Outline
Process Control
• Temperature control and monitoring
• Placement and calibration of IR
• Types of assisting equipment that can be used in conjunction
with spray equipment: such as “Accuraspray”.

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 Outline
Test Pieces
• What types of test pieces are used?
– Tensile buttons
– Metallography
– Almen
– Bend
• Any
A speciali l fixtures/holders
fi t /h ld
– Part and coupon sample preparation
• Almen strips
– What do they do?
– Methods of measurements

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 Outline
Cooling

• What type Cooling method is used, (Shop Compressed Air,

CO2, Liquid Nitrogen)?
• Placement
Pl off cooling
li air
i or system

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 Outline
Masking of Parts
• Tapes/compounds/hard metal/shadow
• Are any Spray Tapes used to mask parts?
• Is Shadow Masking used?
• Is Hard Masking used?
• Is Rubber used?
• Are any Putty Type masks used?
• Current methods
– Hard Masking (22ga – 11ga Sheet Metal)
– Tapes
– Mac-Block
– Putties

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 Outline
HVOF History and Theory
• Why use HVOF now?
• Why are we using HVOF vs. Plasma?
– How is it the same?
– How is it different?
• Critical Issues with HVOF
– Residual stress
– Almen
– Fatigue
• Temperature measurement
• Different types of guns/systems

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 Outline
Spray Booths
• What type of manipulation equipment is used, (Robot or
Gantry)?
– Turntable and traverse speed calculations
– Degrees
D off ffreedom
d on robot
b
• Make-up air and flow
• What type of dust collectors are used?
• Are temperature measuring devices used, (Manufacturer and
Model)?

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 Outline
Spray Equipment
• Wh
Whatt type
t equipment
i t is
i being
b i used?
d?
– Type of console
• Gun type?
– Special parts caps, etc
• Feeder Type?
yp
– Special parts hoses, etc

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 Outline
Spray Equipment (cont’d)
• What Type Fuel Gas is used, (Hydrogen, Natural Gas,
Propane, Propylene, Ethylene, Kerosene, Argon, Helium)?
– How is it stored?
– Flow
Fl issues??
i ??
• What is the Carrier Gas, (Nitrogen or Argon)?
– How is it stored?
– Flow issues??
• Compressed
p air
– How is it generated?
– Flow issues??

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 Outline
Spray Equipment (cont’d)

• Is Gun hand held or machine mounted?

• Is there a Maintenance Program for the equipment?
– Rebuild guns?
– Rebuild ppowder hopper?
pp
• Equipment calibration-flow meters

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 Outline
Parts that are Sprayed
• What types of parts are being sprayed?
• What are the substrates of the parts?
• What size are the parts?
• What is the geometry of the parts, (round, flat, complex
shapes)?
• Do
D ththese parts
t hhold
ld a llott off heat?
h t?
• How are parts prepped for spray, (cleaning, masking, grit
b as g)?
blasting)?

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 Hands-on
Demonstration using equipment to show
different response to parameters
• Vary parameters
• Air flow
• Combustion gas
• Stoichiometric ratio
• Powder feed rate
• Spray distance
• Diff
Different powder
d llots and
d manufacturers
f

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 Hands-on
Demonstration using equipment to show
• Troubleshooting console
• Troubleshooting and rebuilding of gun
• Troubleshooting and rebuilding of powder feeder
• With a generic part, how to:
– Clean
– Grit blast
– Mask
• Spraying generic part and test samples with cooling set-up

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 Hands-on
Part Processing Hands-on
• A proto-type part should be used during the training as a guide
to demo the process of qualifying a product part using the
Plasma/HVOF process.
• Use of actual dummy parts
• Grit blasting of part and coupon
• Part and coupon sample preparation
• Masking Techniques - Hard Masking, Tapes and other types of
masking material that could be used.
• De-masking techniques
• Trail runs and set-ups with coupon preparation, spray, temp
measurement Almen and all lab evaluation
measurement,

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 Schedule
• Day 1
– Morning • Day 2
• General Lecture – Morning
M i
• TS Lecture • Plasma
– Afternoon • Plasma Lessons
• Grit blasting and cleaning – Afternoon
• Go to shop floor • Typical Gun Rebuild
– Q and A Session – Q and
dAS
Session
i

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 Schedule
• Dayy 3
– Morning
• Process Control
• Plasma
l Boothh Hands-on
d
– Afternoon
• Process Control Hands-on
• Maintenance
– Wrap-up Session

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 Schedule-Hands-on

• Day 4 • Day 5
– Morning – Morning
• Mask Cool • HVOF Gun Re-build
• Mask Cool Hands-on • Powder Hopper Re-build
– Afternoon – Afternoon
• HVOF Overview • HVOF Hands-on
Hands on
• HVOF Systems • Facility Problems
– Q and A Session – Wrap up session

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IMR Background
g

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Course Goals

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Course Schedule

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The Plasma Process

2011

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 Acknowledgments
g

• Sulzer Metco
• Praxair TAFA
• NRCC
• Wikipedia
• Marcel VanWonderen

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 Plasma Process

• General Overall Design

• Create a plasma
• Different
iff types off gases-combinations
bi i
• Many different gun designs
• Control of process
• Different types of injection
• Powder delivery

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 General Overall Design
g

• 80% Plasma and Gun related

• 20% Set-up
Set up (masking, grit
blasting, cooling, robotics,
traverse speeds, etc.)

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 Simply
y Put

• Select gas combinations

• Select powder delivery and injection systems
• Apply
A l a hi high
h DC
C voltage
l to
– Anode or nozzle
– Cathode or electrode
• Regulate
g power
p and current
• Plastifies/Melts and accelerate powder
particles

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General Overall Design
g

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General Overall Design
g

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 What is plasma?

• Create a plasma
• What is plasma?

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 Plasma
• Plasma is often referred to as the fourth state of
matter. Plasma, like the other three states of matter
(Solid, Liquid and Gas) has its own unique properties.
• Just as most materials it will become solid if cooled
enough, any substance will become a plasma if heated
enough.
• In a plasma the electrons are stripped from the atoms
creating a substance that resembles a gas but that
conducts electricity
electricity. Plasmas occur naturally on the
earth in flames, electrical discharges, lightning bolts,
etc.

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 Plasma

• In thermal spray,
spray ionize gas by the electrical
discharge from a high frequency arc starter
• Only 55-10%
10% of the gases are actually ionized
• Remainder concentrates plasma plume and
protects the
h wall
ll off the
h nozzle
l bore
b against
i
wear

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 Gun Theory
y

Gun parts
• Cathode or Electrode
• Anode or Nozzle
• Coolingg channels
• Gas distribution ring
• Insulator
What does each part accomplish??

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 Gun Theory
y

• Cathode or electrode
– Water cooled
– Negative part of circuit
– Usually thoriated
Better pics
tungsten
– Consumable

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Electrode

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 Gun Theory
y
• Anode or nozzle
– Water cooled
– Positive part of circuit
– Usuallyy copper
pp based alloy y
– Consumable
– Location in system where shape and Better pics
velocity of plume determined
– Gases protect nozzle bore against
wear
– With Accuraspray results, showing
the influence of different nozzles on
velocity

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 Gun Theory
y
• Location where shape and velocity of plume is
determined
• Diameter of hole
• Shape
h or configuration
fi i
• With Accuraspray results, showing the influence
off different
diff t nozzles
l on velocity
l it

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 Gun Theory
y

• Varied shapes/designs inside the nozzle

• What do we want??
– Heat
H t transfer
t f
– Size/shape of plume
– Velocity??

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 Gun Theory
y

• Insulator
– Simply insulates the cathode-electrode from the
anode nozzle
anode-nozzle
– Sometimes serves as both the insulator and gas
distribution mechanism

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 Gun Theory
y

• Distribution Ring
– Number of holes
– Location of holes
– Diameter of holes
– R l t d tto gas size
Related i andd
energy/velocity desired

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The HVOF Process
General

2011

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 Acknowledgments
g

• Sulzer Metco
• Praxair TAFA
• Stellite
S lli

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 Outline
HVOF History and Theory
• Why use HVOF now?
• Why are we using HVOF (D-Gun) vs. plasma?
– How is it the same?
– How is it different?
• Critical Issues with HVOF
– Residual stress
– Al
Almen
– Fatigue
– Temperature measurement
• Different types of guns/systems

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 HVOF

A. Papyrin et al.
Advanced Materials & Processes /September 2001 p.49

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 HVOF
• HVOF is now capturing a bigger part of the
thermal spray market
• With HVOF’s lower heat input and less
damage to the substrate
substrate, it is now being used in
fatigue critical applications where plasma was
never considered WHY IS THAT?
• Can obtain compressive residual stresses and a
d
dense microstructure
i t t when
h comparedd to t tensile
t il
residual stress with plasma

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Common Applications

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 HVOF
• D-Gun or detonation gun was really first on
the market
• VERY VERY Proprietary Process by Praxair
• Praxair exploited the market for many years,
only performing the process at THEIR shops
• Evolution of HVOF has hurt that market
• Can obtain similar properties
• Many specs use HVOF-D-Gun interchangably

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 D-Gun
Claim 760 m/s

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 Super D-Gun
Claim 900 m/s

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 D-Gun or Super D-Gun

• Gas is ignited and resulting detonation wave

accelerates the powder
• Process is repeated many times per second
• Nitrogen gas is used to purge the barrel after
each
h ddetonation
i
• Like a rapid fire spark plug and machine gun
sound

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 HVOF vs. D-Gun
• HVOF not proprietary
p p y
• HVOF vs. D-Gun can obtain similar properties
• There can be a question if the application
really needs Super D-Gun velocities in many
cases
• Anybody can buy an HVOF system and
d l coatings
develop ti andd process specs

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 HVOF vs. Plasma

• Plasma is a process where heat is most

important so we try to melt the powder with
high energy in most cases
• HVOF is a process that depends more on
velocity like “peening”
peening with a ball peen
hammer
• Plume
Pl in
i HVOF iis much h smaller
ll than
h plasma
l

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HVOF vs. Plasma

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 HVOF vs. Plasma

• Powders
– Can we use the same powders for
HVOF vs.
vs Plasma??

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 HVOF vs. Plasma

• If plasma powder has distribution from beach

balls to marbles, how will we be able to make
the beach balls go fast enough in HVOF??
• Need to cut off the high and low end of the
powder distribution to get the same powder to
work in HVOF systems

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 HVOF vs. Plasma
• What are the normal QC tests we use for a
plasma process?
– Normal QC tests
• Metallography
• Hardness (Macro and/or Micro)
• Tensile
• Bend?
• Erosion?

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 HVOF vs. Plasma
• What is special about qualification of the
HVOF process as compared to plasma?
– There are two major differences
• Heat input to substrate
• Residual stress for fatigue
– Additional tests
• Almen (deposition rate similarity)
• IR Temperature
p Control
• Bend testing

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 HVOF vs. Plasma

• Why more testing??

– You can spray HVOF with very different parameter
sets and get the same microstructure,
microstructure hardness,
hardness and
tensile
– The residual stress and subsequently the fatigue
will be VERY DIFFERENT!!
– Coolingg can make a tremendous difference!!

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 HVOF vs. Plasma
• Why the extra testing?
– If used in fatigue critical applications, near surface property
degradation must be minimized
– For example, landing gears are manufactured from 4340
b d materials
based i l HT’ed
HT’ d to the
h RC 50-55
50 55 range
– If the substrate surface reaches 400-500oF during spraying,
property degradation will occur
– Thus, there is 300-350oF maximum limit written into many
landing gear qualification specifications
– Unlike most plasma qualifications (IR temp not required),
temperature measurement and control is an absolute need
for HVOF processes

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Fatigue
g Bars

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A Typical
y HVOF System
y

Very
good

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Specific HVOF System
y

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HVOF Systems
y

Jetkote

DJ

JP

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 HVOF Systems
y

• Varied HVOF Guns

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 Different Systems
y

Gas
• DJ System from Sulzer Metco
• Jetkote
k ffrom SStellite
lli
Liquid
• JP 5000-8000 from Praxair-TAFA
• WokaJet
WokaJet-400
400 from Sulzer

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