Spring is the time of year when your management team defines plans for the MTFW over the forthcoming twelve months. Once again, we have formulated an exciting programme involving a balanced mixture of seminars, our annual prestigious event which will focus on the steel industry and several structured visits to leading companies in Wales.

The Bulletin, supported by our popular website, will continue to be our front line means of communication. It is our intention, however, to tie the case studies presented in the Bulletin more closely with the seminars and events.This approach is initiated this quarter through presentations on surface protection which are based on our event in the Millennium Centre on ‘Protecting and Enhancing Metal Surfaces;.

The article by the keynote speaker, Professor David Gabe, is particularly relevant. It makes a move towards items that provide an informative overview of key issues in a particular area.Your views on this initiative will be greatly appreciated.Within the Bulletin you will also find details of the forthcoming events.We all look forward to meeting you on such occasions and perhaps persuading you to become a subscribing member of the Forum.

Challenges and Opportunities in Metal Finishing

This is a summary of the presentation by Professor David Gabe at the Forum’s recent event ‘Protecting

and Enhancing Metal Surfaces’ in Cardiff.

Challenges
The pattern of surface finishing commercial operations has been to move manufacturing to cheaper labour locations, notably the far east. But in examining this move more carefully, it applies primarily to the bulk production of commodity products. Innovative products are still in the UK and large scale operations are also still successful – Britain’s two largest metal finishers are within 40 miles of Cardiff and remain stable and successful.

Within the UK, the pattern has been shrinkage so that in the last 40-50 years the number of finishing shops has decreased substantially (-80%) and captive in-house activity has moved to sub-contracting including to the far east. Furthermore, in the last 10 years there has been a 25-30% decrease with a further 25% likely in the next 10 years. But the remaining companies are probably stronger and the most successful have been innovative and expansive and this needs to be aggressively continued.

Environmental considerations, not only from the EU and green politics but from health and safety considerations too, have caused changes both reactive and pro-active. Looking back and taking stock, it is clear that reactive change has been forced on a conservative industry because of its unwillingness to change. For example, cadmium has always been toxic and known to be so. But reluctance to appreciate that consideration of its simple chemistry would show why it was difficult to precipitate successfully in effluent treatment when compared to copper or chromium (optimal pH of 11.5 rather than 9.5) would have shown that effluent treatment is possible using conventional methods and that in use its toxicity is spurious or irrelevant.The result is that cadmium usage in electrodeposition, except for battery applications, has been decimated and been concentrated in a few technologically aware companies for the niche and protected markets of defence and aerospace.

But it is not only cadmium but chromium, nickel, CFCs, complexants etc. which need to be addressed as an opportunity and not an unbearable challenge.

Taking stock of the present range of technology, there are about 10 coating techniques in common use. They have distinctive differences, operate in different engineering fields, and are often not complementary. However, they represent mature technology and all offer significant developments over the last 10 -20 years and need to be considered not as competitors but complementary and supplementary techniques. For example, metal spraying is traditionally applied to large engineering structures for thick coatings and long term corrosion protection.With the advent of plasma spraying temperature is no longer a limitation, ceramics can be sprayed and thin coatings are readily produced.As a top-coating of hard facing cermet for electrodeposits it has huge virtue but who does it? Very few companies in practice.

This represents a particular use of the concept of enhancement and is probably the biggest opportunity which we need to face.

Opportunities A number of current issues were described, listed under two headings. Technological opportunities which were discussed included:
• Nano-technology for coatings and deposits to enhance properties
• Multilayering of electrodeposits
• Agitation of solution to enhance the process and minimize losses
• Mixed technologies for coating by combining differing techniques.
• Use of Plasma to enhance process capabilities Environmental responses have increased recently and several were highlighted:
• CVCs in cleaning to maintain performance whilst minimizing pollution
• Chromium electrodeposition to minimze inefficiencies
• Nickel and avoidance of allergy risks
• Other toxic metals and recognition of their toxic risks
• Atmospheric pollution by minimizing process sprays.

Conclusions
In this new millennium new attitudes, new technologies and new investment are needed to maintain the UK’s industrial base of high valueadded manufacturing leaving the mass production to emerging nations.The UK has always been inventive; now we must be exploitive to survive.