Metal Spraying is Huge Success with Electro Metal Depositors
Metallisation customer, Electro Metal Depositors, are huge fans of metal spraying and says its clients are thrilled with the results.
Electro Metal Depositors, based in Oldham, Lancashire, UK provides anti-corrosion and surface protection for all manner of equipment and structures including turnstiles, playground equipment, security barriers, entrance gates, roadblocks and decorative balustrades. The company prides itself on providing surface coatings that offer corrosion protection, durability and longevity.
Metallisation supplies Electro Metal Depositors with Arc Spray equipment, wires and supporting sundries for use in all of its metal spraying projects. The Metallisation Arc140 system offers a lightweight, medium capacity solution for both anti-corrosion and engineering coating applications. At the heart of the system is the patented ‘Synchrodrive’, which reliably and positively drives the wire at the dispenser and the pistol, allowing the pistol to be up to 20m from the wire. The flexible drive system means that there is no motor in the pistol, resulting in a lightweight, manoeuvrable pistol, increasing the flexibility of the system and reducing operator fatigue.
Although Electro Metal Depositors provides metal spray solutions to many industries and clients around the UK, the company has recently completed two exciting major projects with its client, Broughton Controls Ltd. The first was to protect the entrance turnstiles of an Irish rugby stadium. With a capacity of 50,000, the turnstiles at the rugby ground will be well used, which means they need to be hard-wearing and protected from corrosion. To achieve this, the turnstiles were metal sprayed with zinc and finished with a powder coating. The metal spraying provides an excellent key for the powder coat to adhere to, assisting in the long term durability of the outer coating. Should the powder coat be damaged, by jeans rivets or belt buckles for example, the zinc metal spray comes into its own and protects the base steelwork from rusting. Rusting of turnstiles and handrails can cause sharp areas, obviously undesirable given the amount of people passing as well, as the aesthetic issues.
The combination of metal sprayed zinc and powder coat has provided a hard wearing, anti corrosion coating guaranteed for at least ten years.
The second project was to protect the entrance turnstiles at a defence site in the UK. Again strong, robust, hard-wearing surface protection was required, which has been delivered by metal spraying the turnstiles with zinc. This time Electro Metal Depositors has provided a 20 year guarantee to its client.
In the metal spraying process surface preparation is very important to the success of the final coating. All of the surfaces are therefore prepared by grit blasting with steel grit to SA 2.5, which ensures the surface area is ready to accept the metal sprayed particles. Electro Metal Depositors aims for around 70 - 100 microns of zinc spray and between 70 – 100 microns of powder coat, which gives a total of 140 – 200 microns of protective coating on all projects.
One of the major advantages of metal spraying, as opposed to a process such as galvanising, is that there is no heat distortion of the structures being coated. This is vitally important in the protection of decorative balustrades the company manages on a regular basis. These balustrades can be intricate and delicate mouldings in metal that will be easily distorted by the heat generated in the galvanising process.
A second key advantage of metal spraying over galvanising is the ability to protect large structures. Galvanising is limited to the size of the galvanising tanks and therefore cannot accommodate large structures. Whereas metal spraying has no limitation on the size of the structure it can protect. This was a key factor in the company’s decision to metal spray large roadblocks, which are huge steel structures used in war zones. The roadblocks needed to be protected from corrosion, but also robust enough to withstand an explosion.
Richard Mc Partland, Chief Executive, Electro Metal Depositors, says: “Metal spraying is fantastic. Its strength, durability and long term protection is ideal for the work we are asked to do by our clients. The security companies love metal sprayed surfaces because it is just so strong. It not only provides corrosion protection but it creates a hard wearing, strong surface that lasts for years. We recently used it to protect the security barriers at the site of one of the large banking groups and it has been a huge success. Metallisation is a great company to work with. They are always on hand to offer support and to discuss new developments with us. I am a big fan of metal spraying.”
