Operating an international network of facilities, and serving a wide range of industries including aerospace, defence, automotive, power generation, oil and gas, construction, machine building, medical and transportation, Bodycote is the world’s largest and most respected provider of thermal processing services.
Thermal processing is a vital part of any manufacturing process and includes a variety of techniques and specialist engineering processes which improve the properties of metals and alloys and extend the life of components.
Heat Treatments and Metal Joining
Heat treatment is a controlled process used to alter the microstructure of materials such as metals and alloys to impart properties which benefit the working life of a component, for example.
Bodycote offers an extensive range of heat treatment services and specialist metal joining techniques. With unmatched capacity and computerised systems, our facilities can process a wide range of component sizes to exacting standards with reliable, repeatable results.
Whilst offering all the heat treatment services you would expect from the world’s largest heat treater, Bodycote can also provide advanced specialist services including:
- Automatic shaft straightening
- Corr-I-Dur® (a proprietary form of ferritic nitrocarburising)
- Cryogenic treatments
- Electron beam welding (EBW)
- Honeycomb brazing
- Hydrogen annealing
- Kolsterising® (surface treatment for stainless steel)
- Low pressure carburising (LPC)
- Nitrocarburising
- Plasma surface technologies
- Thermal deburring
- Vacuum brazing
- Mesh belt brazing
- Borocote (high speed boronising)
- Low pressure nitriding
- Speciality stainless steel processes (S3P)
Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP)
HIP uses very high pressure inert gas at elevated temperatures in order to improve the properties of metals and other materials. HIP is used to eliminate porosity in castings and consolidate encapsulated powders to give fully dense ‘wrought’ materials. Incompatible materials can be bonded together to manufacture unique, cost effective components.
Every week a typical Bodycote HIP plant will process many tons of titanium, aluminium, steel and superalloy castings, removing porosity and uprating the performance of parts such as turbine blades, medical implants and turbochargers.
When a project requires advanced materials technology, working with Bodycote HIP could provide the ideal development and production route, allowing the engineer to optimise conventionally formed parts and also to design components unobtainable by other means. Bodycote HIP research specialists are experienced in working with customers to develop novel materials and applications.
With the largest operational capacity in the Western world, and a wide variety of sizes of equipment, Bodycote HIP is able to accommodate large volumes of small product as economically as large individual components.
- Bodycote HIP provides a technical service that transforms both product performance and manufacturing economics.
- High value adding treatments for unconventional materials, enabling customers to achieve unique combinations of design and manufacture to open up new applications and markets.
- When combined with powder metallurgy or investment casting, hot isostatic pressing can provide faster routes to market, with both material and manufacturing savings.
Bodycote’s HIP services include:
Densification:
- Alloy castings
- Ceramics
- Densal®/Densal® II
- Glass
- Infra-red windows
- Medical implants
- Superalloy castings
- Titanium castings
- Tungsten carbide
Powder Metallurgy:- Bi-metallic materials
- Complex PM assemblies
- High speed steel / Cold work steel/PM steels
- Near-net shape (NNS) components
- Sputtering targets
Composites:- Diamond tools
- Diffusion bonding
- HIP brazing
- Novel materials
Surface Technology
Coatings are used to prolong the working life of components and protect them from environmental factors such as corrosion and abrasion. The range of coatings available from Bodycote covers an extensive variety of applications, providing solutions for manufacturers in virtually every market sector.
Bodycote provides indispensable coatings systems for durability, anti-corrosion, wear resistance, improved hardness and electrical conductivity. The combination of modern computerised control systems and unrivalled coatings expertise means that Bodycote can offer specialist ceramic and thermal spray coatings, thermal diffusion, duplex coatings and organics systems.
Bodycote is a specialist provider of K-Tech coatings – a unique range of thermo-chemically formed ceramic coatings for the prevention of wear and corrosion in a wide variety of severe industrial applications including complex geometric shapes and internal bores.
Bodycote’s coatings services include:
Thermal spray coatings:- HVOF (High Velocity Oxy-Fuel)
- Plasma spray
- Arc wire spray
- Combustion spray
- Cold gas dynamic spray
- Flame spray
Thermal diffusion coatings:- Sherardizing
- Sheraplex®
- SheraCote®
Organic coatings:- Delta Protekt KL 100, Delta Seal, Delta Seal GZ
- Magni B18, Magni 565
- Xylan coatings
Mechanical plating:- Mechanical Zinc, Zinc/Tin, Zinc/Aluminium, Zinclad
Other coatings:- Thermochemically formed ceramic coatings (K-Tech)
- Ceramic densification
- Polymer and hybrid coatings
- CompCote® (anodising-polymer composite)
- Nedox® (electroless nickel-polymer)
- Tufram® (hard-anodising-polymer)
- Anodising (aluminium and titanium)
Additional services
Many of Bodycote’s facilities have their own in-house laboratories for quality control and testing of material properties.
Precision machining and surface finishing
Precision machining and surface finishing services are available from selected Bodycote facilities. These services include:
- Milling
- Jig/form grinding
- Wire/spark erosion
- Turning/hard turning
- Design
- Tooling, jigs and fixtures
- Prototype manufacture
- Manufacture of low volume, specialist parts
Research and development
Bodycote’s extensive facilities and expertise mean R and D projects can expand far beyond customers’ in-house capabilities, helping to realise goals quicker and more cost-effectively.
Around the globe, Bodycote has dedicated R and D teams working on a variety of projects. When required, this may include the development of specific processes and equipment for a customer or verification of materials or designs, prior to their application.
In-house development and improvement of standard processes has led to Bodycote offering a range of proprietary processes such as Kolsterising®, Corr-I-Dur® and SheraCote®, which far outperform their standard counterparts.
Further information
For further information on Bodycote’s thermal processing services, please visit our regional web sites: www.bodycote.com/portal.
