Service coatings provide more than the eye can see. Services coatings don’t just give you an aesthetic finish to manufacturing equipment or base material/product. They have engineered barriers that protect your parts from a wide variety of damages and extreme environments.

Concrete, plastics, and metal materials are often strong on their own in many ways. Each of the base materials needs a layer of service coatings that adheres to its surface and protects it from corrosion.

In this Alphatek blog, we’re going over what a coating is, the use of service coatings in the manufacturing industry and how they increase the lifecycle of your goods.

What Is A Coating?

A coating, from a surface engineering point of view, is a layer of material that is layered onto a substrate to enhance the surface properties for corrosion and wear protection. Factors affecting the choice of a coating include service environment, life expectancy, substrate material compatibility, component shape and size, and cost.

There are a variety of different types of service coatings available. They include:

  • HVOF Spraying – High-Velocity Oxygen Fuel spraying is a process to apply very dense, strongly adhered coatings.
  • Plasma Spray – Plasma coating is the most versatile. It’s designed to treat industrial parts that are exposed to many different elements such as heat or wear and tear.
  • Arc-Wire Spraying – This coating involves two consumable metal wires. When fed into a spray gun the wires are heated to melting point and sprayed onto a metallic surface.
  • Flame Spray – Flame spraying is a cost-effective alternative for applying metallic and ceramic coatings in a low-velocity environment and for those delicate applications.
  • Fluoropolymer Coating – In short, Fluoropolymer Coatings are a design engineers’ dream, allowing greater flexibility of design from the start.

What Is The Use Of Coatings In Manufacturing?

In the manufacturing industry, strength, resilience, and reliability are vital characteristics in products and need to be protected to sustain and more importantly increase the lifecycle of goods. 

Our Coating Services recognises the extreme conditions and working environments that these vehicles operate under. Increasing the lifecycle and reducing the service requirements of critical components will increase the usable time of the vehicle.

Spray coatings protect materials and components ranging from infrastructural piping to machinery to floors, manufactured goods, and other surfaces. These coatings can be applied via spray, brush, or dipped, with each product requiring carefully crafted formulating.

Key Factors For Selecting A Bespoke Coating

Custom service coating formulations create a coating solution perfectly matched to parts and their environments. It’s important to consider all potential factors that can impact the substate both during the coating process and in the product’s end-use environment.

Key factors include:

Substrate Identification – Depending on the substrate, the ideal coating formulation may require acrylic, urethane, epoxy, or other materials. Manufacturers should consider the unique protection the substrate requires.

Application Environment – An application’s environmental factors must also be considered for coating selection. Manufacturers should also ensure that their treated parts are protected from UV radiation, abrasion, and physical impact before curing is complete.

Process Identification – Manufacturers should precisely plan the application method. Whether the substrate should be spraying, dipping, or brushing—and whether the process ensures accurate thickness control.

Coating Properties – Different coatings have different properties. During every step of a custom industrial coating formulation, it’s important to take into consideration the part’s application use.

The Benefits of Using Coatings

The key benefits of using Alphatek Spray Coatings include:

  • Thermal Spray applied coatings provide added application performance.
  • Are economical and cost-effective.
  • Provides enormous flexibility of design and can be used on complex geometries.
  • Save money & maximise customer profits by extending component life and minimising downtime for maintenance.

Alphatek

Here at Alphatek, we have a combined over 100 years of cumulative coating expertise in house. We have experienced several projects, industry-specific over the years – check out our case studies.

Working closely with our customers, we have developed our products and services to deliver the best value. Our anti-corrosion coatings solutions provide the best results the first time, every time and with a stress-free service that suits everyone.

Contact Us

For Metal Spraying and Thermal Spray Coating specialists, look no further than us, Alphatek. You can call us directly on 01706 821021, or you can email us at postbox@alphatek.co.uk.

Alternatively, if you would like to visit us we are located 20 miles north of Manchester. Just be wary of our opening times.