Conversion

Tens of thousands of scientists and engineers work in U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) labs inventing technologies that benefit the U.S. defense mission and the American public. This is the story of a DoD invention that became successful through technology transfer.

Extensive salt fog testing (up to 1,000 hr) is required to predict how well a coating will protect a base metal but the correlation with real-world performance is poor.  Electrochemical testing takes only a few hours and can predict how well a coating will perform in both salt fog and real-world applications.

Valence Surface Technologies, a full-service surface finishing company specializing in the commercial aerospace, defense, space and satellite industries with 12 sites across the United States, has received several approvals for its Garden Grove and Wichita operations.

For more than half a century, the finishing industry standard for conversion coating of aluminum aircraft components and surfaces was pretreatments that utilized hexavalent chromium. The result was an iridescent golden color change for ease of inspection, but the chromate was also a known carcinogen and environmental pollutant.

Automotive conversion coatings consist of layers of materials that are chemically applied to the body structures of vehicles before painting to improve corrosion protection and paint adhesion.

There is a growing interest in conversion coatings based on titanium and/or zirconium as the result of the health and environmental issues associated with legacy chromate and phosphate conversion coatings.

Chromate conversion coating is a type of conversion coating applied to passivate aluminum in order to slow corrosion.