The Internal Plasma Spraying on Powerful Technology for the Aerospace and Automotive Industries

Abstract The internal plasma spraying for the deposition of thermal barrier coating already was introduced about 20 years ago. During the last 8 years a new generation of internal plasma torch was developed and introduced in the industry. The new generation is characterized by an improved resistance against the thermal radiation and a significantly improvement of the time life of the guns. The performances of the plasma torches regarding powder feed rate and deposition efficiency also were increased to allow the using in mass production in the automotive industry. The improvement of the time life of cathode and anode was realized by using CFD program to optimize the water cooling of the plasma torch. By the production line for cylinder bore the time life of cathode and anode was increased from 50 to more than 100 hours by the modification of the cooling geometry. Several application of internal spraying for mass production in the automotive, aerospace and the electrical industry will be discussed in details. Especially the internal spraying of the cylinder bore will be shown as typical application of high volume. The advantages of the plasma spraying in comparison with alternative technology will be demonstrated. The further development and future potential applications will be discussed at the end as outlook.