Low Friction Coating

If you have room for wear strips UHMW PE will provide protection. It has a low coefficient of frictionand wears pretty good in simular applications. Relatively inexpensive compared to other plastics.

Resistance to wear depend on pressure and velocity so that the choice has to be optimized considering both parameters. Without this there is arick to have a too fast wear and even in some extreme situations a melt plastic.

Are your surfaces;

Shifting position with little or no weight on them?

Rotating-slow-fast "loaded-unloaded"

moving a high speed with a heavy load?

There are a lot of choices from oil,grease to plates of material like offered by the first contributor.

In short look for the question behind the question and the group help solve your problem.

I have a experiance for a car part manufacturer, may be can help you.

I made a chemical nickel plating with reinforced with teflon when this plating happening. İt is almost as hard as diamond but have a very low coefficient of friction. usually all the other coatings which has a low coefficient of friction has also a soft mechanical resistance. This method solved the problem complately.

Regards

Hasan Arsan

You may consider using a thermal sprayed coating of Molybdenum. This has been commonly used on lathe beds, gearbox synchro rings and piston rings. The material provides excellent wear properties as it is hard but also good slip properties. It can be applied by flame spraying. In flame spraying, the molybdenum is melted, atomised and sprayed on as a coating. The cost of the material is currently around GBP100/kg so it can be expensive. However, expensive is a function of the benefit gained so it may be cheap for your application if it works. Have a look at www.metallisation.com for more info or contact them.

Good luck.

In race engines you will find diamond like coatings (DLC). Ask Mark Bogue from Bekaert.

http://www.pr-gate.net/site/documents/166/696/BDC_QandA_eg.pdf

There is also ion implantation that gives very strong and very thin layers. Look at www.dynacron.com This is much cheaper than DLC according to the company.

You can also contact Hervé Le Guellec from Engineered Mechanical Coatings (EMC) on Phone +33 3 4421 3440. He knows a lot about thin layer coatings.

Best regards from Paris

Try www.slipmate.com they have spray on and powder-coat applications. I have used the nylon and it is tough and and slick. The teflon is slick but not not as durable.

Also, you can take a look at Frigi-Tech. It is a boundry lubricant additive for hvac compressors, but it can be used for applications where lubrication enhancement is needed. We use it in our cars, squeaky doors and of course our a/c systems. Its not teflon based for those instances where teflon is not recommended. www.frigi-tech.com.

Thank you all for the valuable advise.

My application is for a locking plate (4340 HTSR) that slides inside a metal slot.

It is pnematically driven and the speed is 1 ft/s. The load is 100 psi.

There is a local company suggests to use hard chrome or ceramic coating. Will those also work?

Dear friend,

according to my old experiances, that would work very good but be sure that it will abrade the other surface due to the friction. As I mention before, we made a chemical ni-P plating in side the clutch part which was working almost the same as you are saying. Addition of teflone gives a additional help to reduce friction between surfaces. We plate the in side of a hole around 15 cm without problem and very uniform. This method is still in use.

Regards

Hasan Arsan