General Motors (GM) named BASF as its Supplier of the Year for the eighth time in 10 years, citing the coatings company's focus on "harnessing the power of chemistry" to create new, innovative, and environmentally sustainable products for the automotive industry. BASF provides GM with special pigments and technologies that improve the carmaker's productivity while also responding to environmental concerns. Example: the company recently introduced the new CathoGuard® 800 and 900 product line, an eco-friendly cathodic e-coating system that protects component edges and cavities from corrosion.

Columbia Chemical's zinc phosphate coatings increase the durability and service life of painted and powder coated steel parts where maximum performance is essential. COLPHOS Zn 35 provides superior performance with minimal sludge. Apply under paint and powder! Suitable for heavy coating weights (1000 - 5000 mg/ft²). Also use with oils and waxes.

General Magnaplate's surface-enhancement coatings are engineered to provide metal parts and other substrates with corrosion and chemical resistance, super-hardness, and dry lubrication.

Magnaplate's international coatings services are available through a network of licensees in Europe, Asia, and Australia. Visit us here for all facility contact details.

It may be old school, but Eco-Shell, Inc. Processed Walnut Shell Media works like no other blast media. It's perfect for your soft abrasive blasting jobs. Clean surfaces and/or remove coatings from soft substrates without creating large plumes of dust or damaging soft substrates.

Heraeus Noblelight IR Process heating helps solve the most demanding process heating application challenges. Ideal for drying and curing, infrared's unique properties — increased production, high control, small footprint, and (most critically) energy savings — make IR technology the most cost-effective, efficient process heat for industrial, manufacturing, and other applications. www.noblelight.net.

A company that provides commercial vehicles for transportation takes its environmental responsibilities seriously. Commercial vehicle manufacturer MAN recently invested in a new chrome (VI)-free surface coating to treat the high strength steel fasteners used in its vehicles. The new coating is coupled with a post-lubrication process that meets the necessary friction coefficient while also improving corrosion resistance.

If you find this subject interesting, subscribe to the GlobalSpec e-Newsletter, DirectU2 The world of Fastening, Joining & Assembly.

Durable floor coatings, like urethane, provide safe, clean surfaces for factories, hospitals, and other industrial facilities. Now, a newly developed bio-based urethane coating features 50% less petrochemical content, reducing volatile organic compounds and odors. The renewable coating is even available in several colors and in gloss or satin finishes.

For more on this subject, subscribe to GlobalSpec's e-Newsletter, DirectU2 The world of Building & Design.

Cleanliness is a virtue, especially in quantum computing. Scientists have discovered that cleaning the electrode surfaces of a room-temperature, gold-film trap with a beam of argon ions produces a 100-fold decrease in "anomalous heating" — the thermal jitter of trapped ions that interferes with their reliable use as qubits, the quantum equivalent of digital bits. The researchers are also hopeful that the argon cleaning technique will enable them to study other surface phenomena.

Developed in 2002, TWI's Surfi-Sculpt technology uses both electron and laser beams to shape materials precisely and create protrusions from material surfaces varying in size from just a few microns to tens of millimeters. A single beam can form a group of one hundred features in just ten seconds, providing a quick process to modify a material's mechanical, magnetic, or thermal characteristics.

FIREX™ fire protection coatings are optimized to provide the highest level of performance while retaining adhesion in even in the harshest of thermal environments including cellulosic and hydrocarbon type fires.

FIREX™ coatings are used in military and defense applications, agriculture, petrochemical, buildings, airports, bridges, mining, power, and paper industries.

KOSTER American has the moisture control system for your resilient flooring project over concrete. To reduce this potential problem, our systems are engineered to reduce water vapor transmissions to acceptable levels and allow flooring systems to be installed with confidence. KOSTER VAP-I^® 2000 is compatible with most resilient flooring systems. Visit us at www.koesterusa.com.

Negative refraction, that is... Until now, the materials used to make "super lenses" for energy harvesting or coatings for sought-after invisibility applications were very expensive. Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a process for making relatively low-cost laminate materials that can bend light in the opposite direction to the way it responds when passing through natural materials.

This new portable, wireless contact angle meter can ensure the quality of any surface property, from wettability and homogeneity to adhesion and cleanliness. The meter can also be used to characterize how inks or paints will behave on a particular substrate, or to determine the printability of certain materials.

Metal cladding for wear and corrosion protection is big business, especially for oil and gas applications. A high energy density fusion cladding process promises to replace the traditional weld overlay or laser cladding currently used in the industry, offering better surface properties for less cost. The CermaClad™ technology developed by MesoCoat uses a high intensity light source to fuse metal and cermet coatings on steel pipes, protecting the metal from caustic substances. A video shows how the technology works in extreme applications.

Impregnating bearing balls with both a synthetic lubricant and a fluoroadditive extends the life of the bearing while also decreasing its wear and weathering. The fluoroadditive improves lubricity and resistance to wear, and when coupled with the lubricant, helps the bearing perform better in harsh outdoor applications such agriculture.

Professionals engaged in finishing or upgrading of glass, porcelain, or hard alloy parts have been regularly using the FRIALIT-DEGUSSIT grinding tools because they offer exceptional wear resistance, application versatility, and the ability to deal with the hardest surfaces.

More about Friatec N.A., LLC.

Plasma surface treatment technology offers innovative solutions to adhesion and wetting problems in many industries. Component preparation is an important step prior to bonding, painting, varnishing, and coating processes. Plasma treatment provides an economical solution for the cleaning and activation of component surfaces before further processing.

Webinar:
How Aerospace Leaders Manage and Use Materials Information — May 9, 2012

On May 9, Learn from Boeing, Honeywell, and NASA, as they join Granta Design to discuss managing and using critical materials data describing composites, alloys, and other aerospace materials.

Join in online, at no cost, to hear how they are able to capture, analyze, control, and maintain all of their materials information, enabling the creation of fully-traceable design-allowable data. Register today!

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