The problem
The client company provides thermal spray coatings on rolls and hardware used in the printing industry. These act as a barrier to the corrosive effect of the printing inks. The coatings are sprayed on using a JetKote^® process and must be machined to a very smooth finish. The material that was traditionally used performed well in the corrosive environment, but machining was much more difficult. Achieving the final machine finish was a very slow and costly process.

Why it was difficult
The challenge was to alter the powder material composition to improve the machining behavior and reduce finishing time, without affecting performance.

The Stellite solution
The Stellite technical team was able to use its experience in both alloy development and thermal spray technology to evaluate alloy modifications. A new material, based on a variation of the existing alloys, was developed. This made specific changes to the material chemistry so as to provide a significant improvement in machinability while maintaining the overall coating performance.

The result
The customer was able to reduce finishing time significantly. The new material also had better deposition efficiency. This allowed them to increase their application rate and reduce the spray time. The increased spray rate alone more than offset the slightly higher cost of the powder. The combined cost improvements allowed the customer to increase market share for this application.