Coating Matrix Examples

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In a previous post, we discussed the methods for developing a thermal spray coating designation matrix to help ensure consistent sales volume. In this post, I would like to give a couple of examples of how the thermal spray coating designation matrix could look like. You can adapt a similar method to develop your own unique matrix of thermal spray coatings designations for your company.

Lets say your company is called A Thermal Spray Coatings Company. The following is one example of a thermal spray coatings designation table:

TSC-10-A: Wear Resistant Carbide ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-10-A )
TSC-10-B: Wear Resistant Carbide ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-10-B )
TSC-10-C: Wear Resistant Carbide ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-10-C )
TSC-10-D: Dielectric Coating ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-10-D )
TSC-10-E: Dielectric Coating ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-10-E )
TSC-10-F: Rebuild Surface Coating ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-10-F )
TSC-11-A: Wear Resistant Carbide ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-11-A )
TSC-11-B: Wear Resistant Carbide ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-11-B )
TSC-11-C: Dielectric Coating ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-11-C )
TSC-11-D: Rebuild Surface Coating ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-11-D )
TSC-12-A: Re-build Surface Coating ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-12-A)
TSC-99-A: Impregnated Coating ( Internal Spec IS-TSC-99-A )

As you can see, the first three letters is the acronym of your company’s name. The second number defines the thermal spray process family, namely 10 stands for plasma spray, 11 stands for hvof thermal spray, 12 stands for twin-wire-arc spray, 99 stands for something proprietary and so on. The third unit stands for the thermal spray coating material family, for example A stands for Tungsten Carbide Cobalt; B stands for a different class of Tungsten Carbide Cobalt, C stands for Chrome Carbide Nickel Chrome; D stands for Pure Alumina; E stands for Alumina-Titania and so on.

You can proceed to freely distribute your thermal spray coatings designation table as above to your customer, but not provide the Internal Specification for free distribution. Remember that is your internal specification that will outline exactly how to process that specific thermal spray coating as far as processing, evaluation, etc and the customer has no business looking into that without, at the very least, signing a confidentiality agreement. The internal specification will determine what thermal spray process will be used or what alloy blends are to be used and any other special instructions to the OPERATOR to ensure promised product quality and metallurgical characteristics.

I have also come across thermal spray coatings designations, which are intentionally mis-numbered to throw other thermal spray coatings competitors into a never ending loop. For example, it is very easy to de-code your coating designation if it is kept in such a simple format as above. A simple technique that circumvents this is to designate for example APQ-5544 as the designation for hvof thermal sprayed tungsten carbide while PRK-9943 would be plasma sprayed tungsten carbide – notice there is no company acronym or logical assignment of thermal spray process families or material chemistry families. One can argue that science is for everybody to know and knowledge is for everybody to spread; however, in many instances significant effort is spent in developing just the right thermal spray coatings parameters for the application at hand and every company that spends that kind of effort in time and money does deserve to hold on to the proprietary coatings processing techniques so they get rewarded with the sales of thermal spray coatings services that they duly deserve.