September 20, 2007 — HOUSTON, TX — Hardide-T, the new tungsten carbide-based component coating developed by Hardide Coatings, has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) go-ahead for use on food processing equipment.

This opens up significant opportunities for Houston-based Hardide Coatings, Inc. to enter the U.S. food manufacturing sector and to build on its European position where the coating is already being used successfully in food processing applications. As a result of the FDA go-ahead, the company has already entered tests with one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-pressure homogenizers and homogenization systems, which has global distribution to the food, dairy, and beverage industries.

The opportunities for Hardide-T in food manufacturing are primarily in valve, pump, and actuator applications where the company has proven success in other industries.

Hardide-T offers an unprecedented combination of ultra-hardness, toughness, low friction, and chemical resistance when applied to components made from a wide variety of metals. Unlike most ceramics and carbides, Hardide-T is not prone to chipping or flaking, as it will flex with the substrate under severe impact.

Dan Wilson, Hardide Coatings, Inc.’s U.S. business development manager, says, “This is a major development and opens up a vast range of new opportunities for us. Not only are wear, corrosion, and galling major issues for many food manufacturing and fluid handling applications, but we have also seen that we can increase the life of critical seal components that run in contact with Hardide.

“We are already working very successfully in this sector in the U.K. An example is one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, which was having repeated failures with a hard chrome coating that was puncturing and flaking under abrasive conditions, causing the galling of critical ball valves and seats. The life of the parts was increases in excess of 20-fold after being coated with Hardide-T.”

Hardide-T is widely used around the world in aggressive wear or chemical environments in industries including oil and gas, aerospace, valves, and pumps. Its unique combination of properties include:

• Up to 3,500 Hv.
• Accurately controlled thickness ranging from 5 to 100 microns.
• Resists 3,000 microstrain deformation without damage to the coating.
• Binder-free.
• Nano-pore, dense, homogeneous structure.
• Superior bond strength due to chemical bond.
• Low coefficient of friction (Hardide-against-Hardide is approximately half of steel-on-steel).
• Excellent anti-galling properties. In repeated customer tests, Hardide-against-Hardide performs better than any metal combination.
• Satin-like “as-coated” surface finish, but can easily be polished to a mirror finish if required.

Hardide Coatings, Inc. is a Hardide plc company. The company has manufacturing facilities in Bicester, Oxfordshire in the U.K., as well as Houston, Texas, USA.

The Hardide Technology
The Hardide coating process is performed in a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) furnace and is applied to customer supplied components, which are heated to 500 degrees depending on the substrate and the application. Once at the desired temperature, a controlled mixture of gases is pumped into the furnace. In the furnace chamber, a chemical reaction takes place between the gases, which crystallizes on the surface of the components, producing a smooth layer of binder-free tungsten carbide coating with abrasion-, erosion-, and chemical-resistant characteristics. This process enables all parts of the component including internal surfaces to be coated.

Web site: www.hardide.com