The Technogenia Lasercarb Technology Center in Conroe, Tex., houses a machine that deposits anti-abrasion material onto industrial parts.
Located in the heart of the oil and gas industry, the facility is the first in the United States to use the latest in diode laser technology to offer shops a process to protect parts for optimal performance and longer lifespan.
Parts that the facility processes include rotors, scrapers, shaft bearings, stabilizers, sleeves and nonmagnetic stainless steel components used in such hard-wear applications as cutting, drilling, and scraping.
Technogenia (www.technogenia.com) is based in Annecy, France, and its Lasercarb process uses a 4-kW, high-power diode laser coupled with a custom-designed five-coordinate axis NC machine to apply the company’s Spherotene powder coating to parts as long as 40 ft and weighing as much as 5,000 lb.
This special coating is composed of variable sizes of spherical tungsten carbide particles that are held in place by a nickelbase matrix. Its particles exhibit hardnesses of 3,000 +/- 500 Hv and help reduce stress and cracking.
The powder passes into the laser beam through a coaxial nozzle, and the combination of the laser power and the digital control generates a highly controlled deposit. This, coupled with an advanced CAD/CAM system, makes an extremely precise coating for even the most complex part geometries.
During the Lasercarb process, the energy of the laser lightly melts together the filler material (Technolase carbide powder) and the base metal from the workpiece. The process does not affect the carbide grains, which maintain their intrinsic qualities. The deposits are metallurgically welded to the base metal and are extremely dense and easily reproducible.
