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Story Tip
This is a story idea from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge
National Laboratory. To arrange for an interview with a researcher,
please contact the Communications and External Relations staff
member identified at the end of the tip.
A protective coating developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
can extend the life of costly cutting and boring tools by more than
20 percent, potentially saving millions of dollars over the life of
a project. The nanostructure coating, NanoSHIELD, is made from the
laser fusing of glassy iron powders. The product was designed for
high-wear applications such as tunnel boring, construction,
drilling, industrial rock crushing and excavation operations, said
Bill Peter, one of the inventors. While the coatings can be applied
to any type of steel, its first application was for tunnel boring
tools used to cut granite for the Combined Sewer Overflow Tunnel in
Atlanta. Also, in 25 years of testing disc cutter coatings at
Colorado School of Mines, NanoSHIELD-coated cutters were the first
to not spall after one pass at actual rocks.
