Since its foundation Sulzer Corporation has always specialised in machine design and fabrication. One of our major strengths is founded in specialized surface modification. We develop customized surfaces for high value niche products, where run-of-the-mill standard coatings don't meet your requirements. Thanks to our large experience in coating design, we are able to develop tailored coating systems and bring them to production maturity. Depending on the series volume, we will then either coat them ourselves or work with one of our numerous contacts in the business to manufacture the final product for you.

Typical Activities

Our skills cover a variety of fields such as wear and abrasion optimization for components and tools as well as protective coatings for polymers (e.g. elimination of stick-slip effects or self sticking problems). Moreover, our experience in tribology significantly contributes to effective coatings development. We also have numerous solutions to improve the corrosion properties and/or the high temperature resistance of your products.

Friction Attenuation Coatings
	A PVD Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) coating exhibits almost no wear and a low friction coefficient. The use of such a coating on compressor cylinders permitted them to operate without oil lubrication.
Tungsten Carbide Hard Coatings
	Thermally sprayed tungsten carbide coatings are regularly used to minimize wear. Our proprietary coating technology produces a very low porosity and is much more effective against wear than common hard chromium layers.

Tools

Besides a wide range of thermal spraying technologies via our extended spray shops network, finer deposition technologies are also available in-house.

PVD Thin Films Deposition
	PVD Deposition offers a wide range of surface modifications: Diamond-like Carbon (DLC): low wear, minimal friction and chemical resistance Oxides: hard, wear resistant, antireflex, e.g. Titania (TiOx) or Zirconia (ZrO2) Nitrides: hard, low wear, decorative, e.g. Titanium nitride (TiN), Tantalum nitride (TaN), Niobium nitride (NbN) Carbides: very hard, low friction coefficient, e.g. Titanium carbide (TiC) Experimental coatings - several new concepts under development.
Slurry Coatings Deposition
	As costs are one of the main concern with surface treatment, a large range of cost-effective deposition technologies are available e.g. our spray pyrolysis deposition equipment, which enables us to combine deposition and thermal treatment of reactive ceramic coatings.