Mon, 17 February, 2020
As announced last month, TWI’s Technology Centre in South Yorkshire has now received delivery of the UK’s first extreme high-speed coating (EHLA) system. The system is now fully commissioned and operational.
To demonstrate the machine in action, TWI and manufacturer Hornet Laser Cladding BV performed a number of acceptance trials at TWI on Thursday 6 February, 2020.
The trials included the deposition of 316L onto a 60mm diameter steel shaft. For comparison, the image below shows a 316L EHLA coating (left) and a Tribaloy T800 coating applied by conventional laser metal deposition (right). The T800 sample is shown with half the coating finish machined. The EHLA coating took 2 minutes and 20 seconds to deposit a 150µm thick layer. The T800 coating took circa 40 minutes to deposit 2 x 500µm thick layers. The length of the deposits were 185mm and 150mm respectively.
Key benefits of EHLA:
- High area coating coverage rate: >250cm2/min
- Low dilution and HAZ (as low as 25µm and 10µm respectively)
- High density: >99.8%
- Metallurgical bond
- Material grading and unconventional material pairings
Key Industries and Applications with EHLA:
- Corrosion protection
- Hardfacing
- Dissimilar material joining
Photograph taken at TWI Technology Centre (Yorkshire).
Left: TWI’s EHLA Team (Charlotte Blake, Project Leader; Jordan d’Arras, EHLA Technician; Josh Barras, EHLA Lead). Right: Hornet Laser Cladding BV (Jelmer Brugman, Technical Director; Neville Emanuels, Application Specialist).