Functional
Our world is under constant attack! Corrosion, friction, heat, and wear from our environment including rain, salts, particles and chemicals are just a few of the contributing factors that require a need for high performance coatings.
Maintaining functionality and long life of parts and their component systems for applications across all types of industries for equipment manufacturers is critically important.
A reliable and relatively low cost alternative to the use of expensive alloys and metals is to apply thin, functional coatings such as electroless nickel alloys, hard chromium or tin or their alloys over lower cost substrate materials that provide improved performance characteristics. These surface treatments not only increase the durability and useful life of the components but can also enhance certain important engineering or mechanical properties. Part surface heat dissipation, shielding valuable electronic devices from interferences, improved magnetic properties and increased solder ability are just some of the unique characteristics that Functional Coatings can provide for meeting the demands of many applications.
Functional Coatings are utilized for many applications across different industries including Automotive, Electronics, Aerospace and Chemical Industry including Oil and Gas. These Coatings are sometimes referred to as engineered coatings because they can offer many physical advantages over alternative materials. Unlike decorative or protective finishes that focus either on appearance and/or corrosion protection, functional finishes are often applied to internal components in systems designed to overcome a wide variety of conditions including wear, friction and corrosion.
Electroless Nickel
Electroless nickel (EN) as the name implies is a nickel phosphorus alloy deposit that is deposited without electricity from a rectifier. There are many ranges of deposits with varying phosphorus amounts that provide the properties engineers are seeking. The self-sustaining chemical reaction is created by the interaction between the Nickel Ion and the reducing agent (Hypophosphite) in the solution. In addition to the deposit resulting superior wear and corrosion resistance, EN’s primary advantage over its electroplated counterparts is the ability to provide complete deposit uniformity and part encapsulation regardless of the shape, size or complexity of the component.
Hard Chrome
Chromium deposits have been available for 90 years and have evolved more recently in the past 2 decades. We offer technology platforms based on Cr(VI) but more importantly new developments with Cr(III) electrolytes. These electroplating systems provide very hard, bright and durable deposits. These systems offer deposits that are self-lubricating and Vickers hardness 1000 to 1500 HV100, but more importantly these deposits continue to find wide use and appeal for critical engineering applications. These deposits find few alternatives, even under restrictive environmental regulations, for their replacement in many applications.
Tin / Tin Alloys
Electroplated deposits that have excellent conductivity, resist oxidation and readily accept solder and offer NPE free technology for meeting global demand. For these reasons they find wide use in the electronics industry and for many industrial electronic applications.
Decorative
Decorative technologies include advanced systems for Copper, Nickel, Nickel Alloy and Chrome plating that are engineered to meet the ecological, appearance and performance criteria of today’s demanding global markets, including OEM automotive.
Copper
Our CUBRAC Acid Copper Technologies provide industry leading performance advantages such as burn free deposits with excellent low current deposit levelling and brightness. The CUBRAC Line of Acid Copper Technologies include dye, low-dye and dye-free processes engineered to meet specific requirements for a wide range of substrates, including Plastic, Aluminium and Zinc Die Cast.
The DIASTAR line of Non-Cyanide Alkaline Copper Technologies are industry leading systems for depositing a range of copper deposits aspects from dull to bright on steel, zincated aluminium and zinc die cast base metals.
Nickel
Nickel Technologies include a full range of bright, satin, semi-bright/sulphur-free, high sulphur, micro-porous and cracked systems to provide a decorative finish with improved and extended corrosion protection, as well as the appearance demanded by today’s markets.
The CRYSTAL Line of bright nickel technologies, CRITERION Line of semi-bright/sulphur-free and micro discontinuous systems, as well as our SATIN CRYSTAL Line of decorative satin nickel processes engineered to meet the global demands of our customers.
Chrome
With the recent government regulations including ELV, Reach, RoHS and the demands for eliminating work place health hazards, the market for trivalent chrome systems to eliminate hexavalent chrome for decorative applications has grown substantially. In addition to the environmental regulations, more stringent corrosion performance has been mandated by automotive OEM’s globally to meet the demands of Russian Mud, CASS and NSST corrosion requirements. Substantial investment in developing trivalent chrome technologies has positioned COVENTYA is a global leader in key industries and markets that are heavily involved with decorative applications.
Plating on Plastics
The more common applications for Plating On Plastics (POP) today are decorative components for automotive exterior and interior parts such as front grills, emblems, letterings and decorative strips.
n addition, there are also many applications in the areas of sanitary (plumbing) fittings, electronics such as decorative covers for mobile phones and household appliance components.
More than 90% of the plastic parts plated today are manufactured from ABS and ABS/PC resins. Both resin types can be mass produced with high surface quality with injection moulding processes. As a result, the plated surfaces and final layer finishes have a high optical quality combined with very high corrosion and abrasion resistance for the parts being coated which helps meet all appearance and engineering performance specifications.
COVENTYA’S SILKEN Conventional Process line for POP provides all important characteristics such as high throughput and yield, excellent process stability and balanced with efficient cost performance of the entire process.
The SILKEN POP pre-treatment consists of seven balanced single processes steps SILKEN CLEANER, SILKEN Etch, SILKEN NEUTRALIZER; SILKEN CATALYST; SILKEN ACCELERATOR, SILKEN METAL Electroless Nickel and SILKEN CU 801. There are various product choices in each category that provide flexibility for the applicator for easy adaptation into the production line.
With a global emphasis on environmental responsibility, COVENTYA’s newest innovation and environmental focused process is chrome free etching technology called SILKEN BOND.
The SILKEN BOND process is developed and targeting for the need of the next generation POP system providing a complete chrome-free plastic pre-treatment system for applicators and the Industry.
The SILKEN BOND Process is state of the art technology that can be integrated with minimal effort into existing plating lines and represents the future for processing plastics.
Precious Metals
Precious Metal is where COVENTYA truly shines. Our products don’t just finish your luxury items-they complete them. Our innovative precious metal technology and artful aesthetics give the brand owner the ability to direct the course of fashion – and the decision making of consumers.
COVENTYA precious metal finishes are created to be:
ENDURING. Whether the look is timeless or on-trend, COVENTYA finishes are designed to last.
INDULGENT. COVENTYA finishes elevate the quality of your products, differentiating them from other brands and giving you the ability to direct the course of fashion.
EXCITING. Add allure to your designs with beautiful finishes that stand out. A full portfolio of bronze, gold, silver, ruthenium, rhodium, palladium and platinum plating processes offers an endless imaginative array of colours and offers the designers test the limits of their imagination.
EXCLUSIVE. COVENTYA allows you to capture attention with tailored, bespoke finishes offered exclusively by your brand.
Aluminium
The increasing utilization of aluminium alloys today across many industries including Aerospace, Aircraft, Automotive, Transportation Equipment and Building and Architecture will continue to see growth since the benefits of utilizing lighter weight materials that provide good strength properties are realized for many specific applications.
All types of aluminium alloys benefit from some type of chemical processing to provide an important property including hardness, abrasion resistance, colour, bonding of organic coatings, corrosion resistance or simply a visual impact to the surface of the part or component.
Today, parts and components for systems made from aluminium alloys are processed with anodizing, chemical conversion coatings, paint or other organic coatings to provide an important application property. These include protecting their surfaces from corrosion in service, or delivering good adhesion bonding of an important layer over the aluminium or to impart a decorative finish to the surface. For Architectural applications where the finish must be maintenance-free for several decades and for Aerospace/Aircraft applications there is only one opportunity to make it right the first time, it is critically important to provide the correct surface preparation for the alloy.
Protective Products
Once a neutral salt-spray test and a singular coefficient of friction were the only key performance indicators for protective coated parts. Nowadays fasteners, for example, benefit from a steady coefficient of friction, even when subjected to multiple tightening, galvanic matching of different kinds of materials, cyclic corrosion requirements, conductivity, and many more.
The demand for multi-functionality requirements is only going to increase, and here at COVENTYA we work continuously to meet this demand.
Nevertheless, for our clients durability is always a priority.
Our job is to proof components against corrosion to increase their life. To make sure the treated components can reach a full performance potential and face the most challenging environments a highly-engineered multi-step electro-chemical plating process is carried out. The correctly-activated parts are plated with an 8- to 12-micron layer of zinc or zinc-alloys — in the case of our PRIMION or PERFORMA ranges — that acts as a sacrificial coating to protect the part. Coatings of this type will be attacked instead of the part itself, shielding the part from any physical damage. A very thin passivation — our FINIDIP or LANTHANE brands —is applied, making the base coat corrosion-resistant and giving it the desired finish colour. Lastly, the item is covered with a top-coat (our FINIGARD brand), that seals the entire surface and offers additional benefits, such as specific frictional properties – a requirement for most automated assembly lines.
Preparation
COVENTYA has many years of experience in surface preparation and offers a synthetic approach with a complete line of Cleaners. Our Preparation range includes PRESOL solids, PRELIK liquids and pickling additives, such as PICKLANE.
PRESOL and PRELIK Lines are dedicated to cleaning using a simple dipping such as soak cleaning, electro cleaning, ultrasonic cleaning or spray cleaning. Depending upon applications and substrates, the platers will select the relevant cleaner. By using a separate wetting agent such as AB 47, the same cleaner may be used for different applications within the same plating line, according to an acceptable degree of foam.
All COVENTYA’s Preparation Processes are free of nonylphenol derivatives and are biodegradable. PICKLANE Line meets all requirements in terms of oxide removal and metal activation prior to metal plating.
Innovations
During the last decade, COVENTYA substantially modified the PRESOL and PRELIK Lines and withdrew a large number of non-environment friendly components. Strong complexing agents, non-biodegradable wetters, and solvents have been replaced with greener technologies.
COVENTYA has unique advantages in cast and polish alloys and is advanced in the concept of hydrophobic-hydrophilic cleaning. All polish pastes and inorganic sediments can be easily removed and the efficiency of plating lines is drastically improved.
Cathodic Electrocoats
Molclear by COVENTYA Ltd., originally the Molecular Technologies Company, is an eco-efficient metal finishing process designed to complement or replace existing electroplating type processes.
The Molclear brand, a market leading cathodic electrocoat range of products, has gaining a reputation as the most reliable and consistent lacquer available. This is achieved because we formulate the products from specialist polymers developed in our own laboratories, allowing us to develop resins with better curing at low temperatures as well as having very good wet film strength. This means no pre drying is required and that parts can be handled when wet with little risk of damage and roughness.
Using Molclear technology finishes ranging from Gold to Brass, from Stainless Steel to Antique Bronze can be applied to most metallic substrates.
For more information visit www.molclear.com
Watercare
With COVENTYA being one of the leading players in the electroplating and surface finishing market, what’s more natural than extending our know-how to WaterCare, wastewater treatment and industrial water treatment?
Beyond the role of a specialty chemicals supplier, COVENTYA offers you a strategic partnership where implementing our WaterCare expertise fulfils both an effective process chemistry and the satisfaction of meeting environmental needs.
Under the OMEGA Line, our portfolio of Coagulants, Cationic Polymers, Metal Precipitants, Anionic Polymers, Antifoaming Agents and Specialty Products will enable a complete compliance with your local environmental requirements.
Effective water resource management is viewed as our corporate responsibility. Therefore we are fully committed to design the best solutions for water return, renewal and recycle and to participate in the global water conservation.
As part of our Eco-Philosophy and Customer Service Benefits, a Partnership with WaterCare by Coventya will simplify your process providing satisfaction and assurance in meeting your goals.
With WaterCare, you can now ‘close the loop’ with the 360 degree COVENTYA involvement.
For more information visit www.coventyawatercare.com
Surface Finishing AU NZ
P O Box 808, Morayfield, QLD, 4506, AUSTRALIA.
eMail: info@surfacefinishing.com.au | Phone: +61 4 5816 9572 | Fax: +61 7 3319 6089