Rajhans Corporation

Surface Treatment

Home
Capabilities
Surface Treatment

About Surface Treatment

Surface treatment encompasses a variety of processes designed to alter the surface properties of materials to enhance appearance, performance, and durability. These treatments can improve corrosion resistance, wear resistance, electrical conductivity, and aesthetic appeal, making them vital across various engineering applications.

Manufacturing Process

Plating

Electroplating: Involves depositing a thin layer of metal onto the surface of a workpiece using an electric current. Common metals used include chrome, nickel, zinc, and gold. Electroless Plating: A chemical process that deposits a metal coating without the use of an electric current. It provides uniform thickness and is used for metals like nickel and copper.

Anodizing

An electrolytic process that forms a protective oxide layer on the surface of aluminum and other metals. This layer enhances corrosion resistance and can be dyed for decorative purposes.

Painting and Coating

Powder Coating: Involves applying a dry powder to a surface and then curing it under heat to form a hard, durable coating. It offers excellent corrosion resistance and aesthetic appeal. Liquid Coating: Traditional paint application that provides a protective and decorative finish.

Heat Treatment

Case Hardening: Involves hardening the surface of a metal workpiece to improve wear resistance while maintaining a softer, ductile core. Methods include carburizing, nitriding, and carbonitriding.

Chemical Treatments

Passivation: Treating stainless steel and other metals with an acid solution to remove contaminants and enhance corrosion resistance. Phosphating: Applying a phosphate coating to steel surfaces to improve corrosion resistance and paint adhesion.

Thermal Spray Coating

Involves spraying molten or semi-molten materials onto a surface to form a coating. This method can apply metals, ceramics, and polymers to improve wear and corrosion resistance.

Laser Surface Treatment

Uses focused laser energy to alter the surface properties of a material. Applications include laser hardening, laser cladding, and laser texturing.

Mechanical Treatments

Shot Peening: Bombarding a surface with small spherical media to induce compressive stresses and improve fatigue resistance. Polishing: Using abrasive materials to smooth and enhance the surface finish of a workpiece.

Electropolishing

An electrochemical process that removes a thin layer of material from the surface to improve smoothness and shine, often used for stainless steel.

Benefits of Investment Casting

The advantages of investment casting are impressive. Create almost any configuration of your precision metal component with High Dimensional Accurcy and Superior surface finishing at very compitative cost. A Design parts as small, large, or complex as you need. In short, eliminate many of the barriers holding you back today.

Consider the following investment casting benefits, which can also help you:

Complex Geometry: Investment casting allows for intricate and complex shapes to be easily produced. This is because the process involves creating a wax pattern that can be molded into almost any form.
High Accuracy and Fine Detail: It can achieve high dimensional accuracy and excellent surface finish, making it suitable for parts with intricate details and tight tolerances.
Versatility: Investment casting can be used to cast various metals and alloys, including steel, aluminum, bronze, and others, providing versatility in material selection for different applications.
Minimal Material Waste: Since the process uses a wax pattern that can be melted and reused, there is minimal material wastage compared to other casting methods.
Cost-Effective for Small to Medium Batch Sizes: While it may not be as economical as some high-volume manufacturing methods like die casting for large quantities, investment casting can be very cost-effective for small to medium batch sizes due to its ability to produce complex parts without the need for expensive tooling.
Smooth Surface Finish: Investment casting typically yields smooth surface finishes, reducing the need for extensive post-processing.
Reduced Machining Requirements: Parts produced through investment casting often require minimal machining or finishing operations, saving time and costs in the manufacturing process.
Design Flexibility: Design changes can be easily accommodated by modifying the wax pattern, allowing for flexibility in product design iterations.
Material Properties: Investment casting allows for the use of a wide range of materials, enabling manufacturers to select the most suitable alloy for the desired mechanical properties, corrosion resistance, and other performance characteristics.
Suitable for High-Performance Applications: The ability to produce parts with complex shapes and superior surface finishes makes investment casting suitable for high-performance applications in industries such as aerospace, automotive, and medical devices where precision and reliability are critical.

Tool Steels

Signicast makes tools from alloys of iron containing 0.25-2.5% carbon with substantial amounts of chromium, molybdenum, tungsten, vanadium, cobalt, and to a lesser extent nickel to achieve the desired combination of hardenability, hardness, toughness, and wear resistance.

400 Series Stainless Steels

The 400-series group of stainless steels contain 11-27% chromium, up to about 1% carbon, and 2.5% nickel maximum. The grades of stainless steel castings Signicast most often produces respond to heat treatment and can be supplied with a predominantly martensitic microstructure in a wide range of strength and hardness.

Aluminum Investment Casting

Aluminum alloys possess a unique combination of mechanical properties and corrosion resistance. These alloys are roughly one-third as dense as steel with higher strength to weight ratios.

Carbon and Low Alloy Steels

Carbon and low alloy steels are the workhorses of the mechanical world. No other class of materials offers as wide a range of mechanical properties as economically.

Cobalt Based Alloys

Cobalt based alloys are very corrosion and heat resistant due, in large part, to the unique properties of cobalt. The alloys produced at Signicast are generally for heat resistance and/or wear resistance and therefore contain large amounts of carbon, chromium, and carbide formers like tungsten.

Nickel

Consisting primarily of nickel, chromium, and molybdenum, smaller additions of other alloying elements are used to create alloys with very high corrosion resistance while other elements would be used to create alloys with very high hot strength.

Thermal Expansion Alloys

Thermal expansion alloys, such as Invar and Kovar, are made up of an iron-nickel base and are known for their low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE). Iron and nickel have very similar CTE, however with these alloys, thermal expansion is affected by the addition of nickel to iron.

300 Series Stainless Steels

The 300-series group of stainless steels contain 16-30% chromium and from 6-35% nickel. Depending on the composition, the microstructure is predominantly or wholly austenitic and thus unresponsive to heat treatment.

Building Better Prototypes

By definition, a prototype is the first, preliminary model that allows design engineers the ability to quickly and efficiently explore their designs, test their performance, and craft even better components. After all, production components will be modeled and copied from this initial part.

When the prototype is the building block essential to the success of a project, don’t be forced to choose a prototyping supplier based on time and cost. So much can be learned from a prototype’s function, the need for a quality prototype is critical. When designing metal components, an exact replica of your final part is the best prototype you can get.

Rapid Prototyping

Crunch time may mean different things for different projects, but one thing’s for sure, nobody wants unforeseen surprises.

Stopping to prototype your design, evaluate its feasibility, and ensure its productivity might be critical to your product’s ultimate success. But at this stage of a product’s lifecycle, timing is essential. A delay of weeks can result in lower sales and lost market share.

Our in-house rapid prototyping can significantly accelerate your time-to-market. We simulate production using the specific process and our proprietary wax to deliver the most accurate results at a fraction of the time it takes other investment casting companies.

Signicast’s Capabilities

When it comes to developing your ideas, we’ve got the most effective prototyping options for your component—not to mention the in-house prototyping experts to help you choose the right one for the job. Our prototyping capabilities include:

3D printed wax patterns created in-house within hours and immediately processed into fully functioning metal components.
Rapid in-house tooling using your part geometry, produced manually to reduce lead time and cost.
Specially formulated proprietary wax that is run through our highly automated investment casting process to ensure dimensional accuracy.
The ability to prototype utilizing any of our metals—you are not limited by material offering.
Capable of any secondary operation that the customer requires including: assembly, heat treating, welding, plating, painting, and more!
Not ready for an exact replica just yet? Work with Signicast to create an SLA, or stereolithography resin pattern of your part, produced by one of our partners.

Minimum Order Quantities (MOQs)

Signicast does not have a minimum order quantity for prototypes. So whether you need one or one hundred, our team can provide a consistent supply of production-like components.

Prototype Lead Times

Best of all, we can create prototypes in as little as five days. Our average tooling lead time is three to five days. Lead times can vary based on complexity of the part and overall project needs.

Cast Prototyping

We know that finding a supplier who can constantly and consistently supply prototypes can make or break your business. Investment cast prototyping is efficient in the overall cost and time of the project. The best thing is, you do not have to compromise quality for time or cost. Our in-house team of knowledgeable engineers are constantly thinking outside of the box to ensure our customer’s designs become a successful reality. Let us help you succeed.

Contact and Support

You have questions?
We're always happy to help you!