Award SPARKs Increased Production

With a strong demand for hard wearing coatings, a PowdermatriX SPARK award enabled Chapmans Agricultural Ltd to discover how to make their Armatech coating even more durable and to successfully launch a new product into the agricultural market place.

Chapmans Agricultural Ltd is one of Europe's leading suppliers of abrasion resistant wear parts for a wide range of sectors. The firm has a strong reputation for innovative products including Armatech, a powder metallurgy based coating which improves the wear resistance of metal parts used in the agricultural industry.

Initial tests carried out by Chapmans and the Materials and Engineering Research Institute (MERI) at Sheffield Hallam University suggested that the addition of certain hard phase powders could improve coating performance.

Testing for compatibility with the Armatech matrix, characterising coating microstructure and measuring physical properties at Sheffield Hallam University resulted in a list of four powders likely to give the greatest improvement in product performance.

The contenders were then sintered by Chapmans and assessed by MERI using lab-based abrasive wear testing procedures, which use silica to replicate the abrasive effect of soil. These initial feasibility tests revealed one particular material meeting all the necessary performance criteria.

A year on from project completion, Chapmans are seeing the benefits from the SPARK Award. After launching their new Armatech product, they have increased the production on the coating line from one shift to three shifts per day to meet customer demands.