ReliaCoat Technologies has introduceed a game changing industry 4.0 digital manufacturing platform, ReliaCoat Command Center: Autonomous Sensor Integration for Digital Thermal Spray Manufacturing, to advance the state-of-the-art of thermal spray (TS) materials deposition technology. TS, a $10 billion worldwide manufacturing industry, is crucial to the economic and safe operation of numerous engineering systems. These coatings are applied both in original equipment and in overhaul. Despite its success in applications over multiple decades, TS has remained a “special process” requiring significant operational care due to complexities, dated metrologies, accelerated automation and changing work forces. A key challenge has been the inability to monitor critical process parameters and resultant products from within the confines of the harsh operational environments contained within ever increasing robotized spray-booths. ReliaCoat Command Center provides “eyes and ears” to this non-equilibrium, large thermal-gradient environment resulting in new insights. This autonomous sensing capability along with visual, user-friendly software, enables real-time process and coating data establishing process windows, identifying instabilities and providing input for big-data manufacturing analytics.
