FAQS
A cold process that bonds one metal to another (or others) in order to achieve specific properties and application benefits, including economic. The cladding process joins metals via high pressure and without brazing alloys or adhesives. Typically, cladding is a continuous roll bonding process that combines two or more strips of metal. Intense pressure creates a metallurgical bond at the atomic level so that the separate metals are joined through a common bonded structure with a shared electron surface.
Cladding is all about customizing metals to achieve specific tailored application benefits unachievable with any single metal. A metallurgist or materials engineer can help you identify which metal combinations are best to achieve a design’s application performance goals. Some of these goals might be: surface appearance; resistance to corrosion or wear; magnetism; electrical or thermal properties; workability; compatibility; density; strength; and a variety of other vital factors. There are definite economic benefits to cladding, such as when product designs can be simplified (fewer parts) or processing can be optimized or service life can be extended.
The annealing process uses heating and cooling to soften metal structures to achieve or improve specific properties. In rolling, metal passes between rolls and under pressure, which reduces its cross-section. Toll working is often used to convert obsolete or excess inventory in usable material
This process occurs on a continuous machine that uses a form tool to cut a trough into base metal strip stock. The cladding metal is inlayed into this trough and later bonded to it.
Like cladding, EB welding is intended to fuse dissimilar metals together. A beam of electrons is applied, creating heat and transformation upon impact. The process is often performed under vacuum.
Typically, hardness is a measurement of resistance to deformation using an indenter. There are a number of hardness scales and methods, including Rockwell, Brinell, Scleroscope, Tukon, and Vickers offers metal hardness comparison.
Many different types of metals can be combined through cladding. While precious metals are expensive, they might deliver just the right combination of application-specific advantages you are looking for, ultimately saving money. Copper, aluminum, gold, platinum, mild steel, stainless steel, lead, bronze, brass, and titanium are just some of the possible metals that are suitable for cladding with other metals.
Inlays can be used to bond precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum and palladium with less expensive materials such as copper, brass and stainless steel. Through an inlay design, the properties of the precious metal can be targeted precisely and leveraged, while also integrating heat sinking and other specific benefits from the less expensive material. Inlays permit use of alloys that cannot otherwise be plated, but with all the advantages you would attain through plating. Overlay cladding is a somewhat different process by which dissimilar layers of metals are bonded together, using extreme pressure (and sometimes heat) and no adhesives or fillers. Overlays can be single clad (two layers), double clad (three layers), or as many as seven layers.
These clad anodes are utilized in the chrome plating process, for cathodic protection of metal surfaces, for impressed current to tantalum, as well as for titanium processing and electrowinning.
Electrowinning is the electrodeposition of metals from their ores that have been put in solution or liquefied. It is an important technique for purifying non-ferrous metals.