Strong Coatings for Tanks and Drilling Tools

In the oil and gas industry, Laser systems play an important role in different application processes.

In the oil and gas industry, companies share independently from their segment certain challenges: The use of big tools and systems under difficult operation and environmental conditions. To defy the corrosiveness of crude oil and natural gas, the inner coatings of oil and gas tanks must be stable long-term and additionally pore-free and crack-free to ensure the required safety. Coatings by laser powder cladding can be fairly convincing here by their maximal impermeability combined with a long lifetime, which is why they are clearly superior to other coating techniques such as thermal spraying.  

 

Furthermore, the relatively new high-speed powder cladding allows for a quicker realization of large-scale coatings and a more economical process control. Additionally, it can replace galvanic coating processes like (threatened by an EU-wide prohibition) hard chromium plating and therefore is also interesting for the realization of protective coatings of drilling tools that are exposed to particularly great wear and strong corrosion.