Saturday, May 5, 2018

Back To Repair

We have now been educated to new technology such as advanced manufacturing ,robots and consulting the Internet for all things, like data storage. We have also now been educated to not repair things but to throw non-functioning things out the window and replace them quickly with a new gadget.
In the past, you had reason to repair equipment and quickly restore it to operating condition. However, that meant inventory, and that is a bad word today because inventory is expensive.However, with just in time concepts, now it becomes overnight delivery of a spare defective part, if all goes well. However, what do you do in the field, especially when something suddenly becomes damaged, especially things like off the road equipment that is becoming more important to increase payload and save money? Unfortunately JIT conditions become perilous.
So, what to do. In the past, and still, common people were trained to make repairs in the field. Howeve,r much of the damage results from degradation of the surface. Fatigue, corrosion, impact and wear are the principal reasons. Again, in the past, many processes such as welding hard facing, plating, plasma welding, etc. have modified the surface to at least minimize damage. These processes are now becoming questionable because they require too much time to repair; coatings are limited in depth, many are porous and most have a brittle interface leading to spalling.Therefore, faster, thicker deposits to protect the surface is required.
MagnaTech has developed a process that uses an activated gas to deposit a reactive concentrated surface. Through the process of diffusion. this concentrated deposit reacts with internal alloying elements alloyed to provide strength and toughness, required for the application, to react with these alloying elements at the surface to form hard, wear and corrosion stable intermetallic compounds at the surface that are thicker and corrosion and wear resistant without generation of a brittle interface.
MagnaTech is currently promoting a modification of the process to provide field coverage to provide fast deposition on site that has the same characteristics n the field as well as for initial protection. If interested call MagnaTech for further details and trials for your application.