Development of Efficient Thermal Spray Coupon Metallurgical Laboratory Processing

Maintenance & Repair Operations (MROs) involve replacement of specialty coatings, used to prevent wear and corrosion, as part of their repair process.  Mission critical components that are coated using thermal spray methods require process verification coupons to be coated simultaneously with the components.  These coupons then undergo rigorous processing and inspection in the metallurgical laboratory to ascertain the coatings have achieved quality microstructure characteristics such as bond strength, porosity, unmelts, oxides, integrity, hardness, etc.  When a shop applies coatings to a wide assortment of components, there are a wide assortment of coupons that must be processed.  The current process of manually managing coupon inventory, marking, spraying and processing provides many opportunities for error and can cause unnecessary delays in releasing time critical repair components.  A system is needed that will manage the thermal spray coupon inventory, provide automated coupon dispense with intelligent serialization at time of use (date, booth, operator, process, etc.) and provide a means of tracking the coupons throughout the entire process of coating application, sectioning, mounting, polishing and the various inspections/evaluations. The system needs to provide automated visibility of coupon status at any time to ensure delivery of high priority components are not delayed.