Development of the thermal spray (TS) industry into year 2000 from a spray shop point of view

摘要

New technology and technology improvements are vital to the success of many industrial processes today. Companies that remain stagnant face the risk of losing market share. As an integral part of this process change, it is clear that the availability of the proper materials is important to enable new technologies. Given the need to push the materials performance envelope to engage novel technologies for a number of markets, it is not surprising that research in many industries is being focused on surface engineering. Thermal spray coatings can play a major role in the surface protection market, as do weld overlays and other surface techniques. Threats and opportunities in the thermal spray industry include TS process developments, impact of health and safety, standardization, pre/post treatments, non destructive evaluation of coating characteristics and environment (i.e. labour laws, year 2000, Euro introduction) The European thermal spray industry size will be estimated. Examples of customer requirements from typical Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM's) to industry end users will also be discussed, Finally, some views on the ability of a particular spray shop to compete and grow given the above market conditions will be provided. In addition, we will discuss internal benchmarks used by Terolab Services.