High-Velocity, Pulsed Wire Arc Spray

A high-velocity, pulsed wire arc spraying apparatus has been proposed and partly developed in an effort to improve the quality of coatings deposited by thermal spray techniques. In this apparatus, material from a wire arc is atomized and propelled toward a deposition substrate by a repetitively pulsed plasma jet. As explained below, this development is prompted by (1) the observation that the particle velocities attainable in traditional wire arc spraying are too low to enable the deposition of dense, high-quality coating materials that are often desired and (2) the expectation that higher spray velocities should result in superior coatings.