Thread: Thermal Metal Spraying

A year back at an onsite auction I picked up a thermal metal powder sprayer. I had a few ideas, mainly fixing worn seal areas on the gear we have. Getting it done in the commercial shops was not a cheap experience. For what I though small jobs several hundred dollars would change hands.

My only problem was this runs on acetylene, and I only had LPG. With the advent of buy your own E size acetylene bottles and my general discontent with the performance of LPG on Comet3 gear, I have gone back to acetylene. I found a queensland based seller of metal spray powders https://www.metalspraysupplies.com/ , and the manufacturer of my sprayer sent me an instruction manual (it has been in production for decades https://www.ibeda.com/en/autogenous-...31-unisprayjet )

I also had to make a powder bottler as it never came with one. I printed one up on the 3D printer, complete with a 4mm pitch square thread.

With everything I needed along with instructional videos on youtube from Abom79 I gave it a whirl.

Seems to not be a very complicated process. Some practice is needed, but otherwise I think I will be able to repair my own worn parts rather then sending them out.

20180901_174328.jpg 20180901_172118.jpg 20180901_171418.jpg

How gas hungry is the process, will an E size get you many repairs?

Nice, so does that mean we can send clapped out lathe beds to you for rebuilding and refacing?
When your neighbours find out you can do it, you won't have to worry about farming!!!!!
Do you have a cylinderical grinder to go with it??
Kryn

Originally Posted by caskwarrior

How gas hungry is the process, will an E size get you many repairs?

Not very hungry. It is a cold process, the job is not supposed to get over 200C.

Originally Posted by KBs PensNmore

Nice, so does that mean we can send clapped out lathe beds to you for rebuilding and refacing?
When your neighbours find out you can do it, you won't have to worry about farming!!!!!
Do you have a cylinderical grinder to go with it??
Kryn

When I get myself cloned three times yes you will

Have a cylindrical grinder here and it is reasonably set up if needed. I am not expecting much work building up parts other then my own. I am not looking for extra work to do. Maybe down the track we will see how things are going.

Originally Posted by .RC.

When I get myself cloned three times yes you will
.

Can't you just print a couple of copies?

Many years ago I would help my uncle out at his shop on week ends, he used this method extensively to build up worn shafts and various wear plates and parts that required hard facing, he used CIG gear back then

Nice work, and a very handy tool for your farm repairs, I am sure you will find plenty of work for it now that you have the set sorted out. When we had our foundry we used to get all of our machines shafting rebuilt by a local engineer, saved on price and down time. Sand and bearings do not mix well.
Bob

Will we see you doing demos at feild days in Sth Seast QLD

its a handy process. We do hot process spray metal at work. Its great until you have it nearly to finished size and find out some of it hasen't fused. Can you use the hard powders with that setup? We did some parts once that we could only machine the spray with a CBN grinding wheel.

Sand and bearings do not mix well.

I hear ya! And people wonder why I have been turning a lot of dirty/grit filled canvas jobs away these days. Guess where the crap that comes off falls to....

Yeh! straight into the bobbin case and hook race

Had another go and ground this one

20180902_175700.jpg

Is it possible to build up sheetmetal using this method? I've seen it used to deposit steel onto more solid section parts, but never on something thin.
I have some complex shaped pressed steel sheet bits which are corroded too thin to weld and repair. Making the metal that's there thicker would allow mr to restore these bits....

Originally Posted by .RC.

A year back at an onsite auction I picked up a thermal metal powder sprayer. I had a few ideas, mainly fixing worn seal areas on the gear we have.

Hi Richard
Not just seal areas. A loooong time ago where I did my apprenticeship we got a metal spraying kit and used it on everything. There was the main bearing housing for the crankshaft in a Vilter 6 cyl. ammonia compressor that had the bearing outer race spin, countless worn shafts, the odd stub axle and even the steering trumpet housing on a road grader.
I found that component temperature was critical, what did you use for temperature measurement.

Phil

Originally Posted by jhovel

Is it possible to build up sheetmetal using this method? I've seen it used to deposit steel onto more solid section parts, but never on something thin.
I have some complex shaped pressed steel sheet bits which are corroded too thin to weld and repair. Making the metal that's there thicker would allow mr to restore these bits....

Not sure Joe, the adhesion to the base metal is mechanical. They do use cold metal spraying for corrosion protection using aluminium powder and other guns use wire and different methods to melt the wire/powders like plasma or arc.

I think what was explained above was fusion metal spraying. CIG made gear for that, you heated the part white hot and sprayed a powder onto the surface and sweated it onto the surface.

Originally Posted by Steamwhisperer

Hi Richard
Not just seal areas. A loooong time ago where I did my apprenticeship we got a metal spraying kit and used it on everything. There was the main bearing housing for the crankshaft in a Vilter 6 cyl. ammonia compressor that had the bearing outer race spin, countless worn shafts, the odd stub axle and even the steering trumpet housing on a road grader.
I found that component temperature was critical, what did you use for temperature measurement.

Phil

I used a IR temp gun. The process has been around for quite a long time, powders today are probably better though.