Exhibitor acs at the Surface Technology 2024 trade fair

acs Coating Systems, manufacturer of HIFFICIENCY® products among others, as an exhibitor at the Surface Technology trade fair

For the second time, acs Coating Systems , manufacturer of HIFFICIENCY® products among others, participated as an exhibitor at the Surface Technology trade fair in Stuttgart. This trade fair for surface technology attracts primarily project engineers and purchasing managers from manufacturing companies. acs specializes in the technical applications of non-stick coatings, sliding coatings/wear protection, and electrical insulation. As with the previous fair in 2022, there was considerable interest in acs's specialty coatings, especially since acs developed and showcased new, PFAS-free coatings for all applications.

PFAS stands for polyfluoroalkyl substances and is a group of approximately 10,000 substances. These are essential for the production of fluoropolymers (Teflon® products; Teflon is a DuPont brand) and are also released during the decomposition and, to some extent, during the use of these materials. PFAS are difficult to biodegrade, some are carcinogenic, and they pose multiple health risks. The environment and organisms are already contaminated with PFAS. For this reason, PFAS are to be banned EU-wide from 2025, although the transition periods for industry will last several years, and there will likely be exceptions. Nevertheless, many companies are already working to make new products PFAS-free or to convert existing products and machine parts, and some have already done so.

acs not only exhibited its products but also gave a technical presentation on the topic and the new coatings. Examples were given of PFAS-free non-stick coatings, PFAS-free polymer sliding coatings, and PFAS-freeinsulating coatings for high temperatures and high mechanical stress. Overall, acs coatings are characterized by particularly high wear resistance and robustness, which in some cases far surpasses that of Teflon® products.

The leadership of acs in PFAS-free coatings is easily explained. At STE Dichtungstechnik, where acs Managing Director Dr. Christoph Stecher had previously worked for many years, a special single-layer cylinder head gasket, stamped from solid steel, was developed in the 1990s. Tests on their own engine test bench revealed that the stress on the coatings was particularly high with this design, which is why the gaskets did not remain leak-proof for long. Whether fluoroelastomer (Viton®, a DuPont brand) or any variant of PTFE (Teflon®), they all failed within a very short time, in less than an hour under thermal shock. Metallic coatings also failed because the metallic sliding surfaces exhibited friction welding under high load, causing the gaskets to leak quickly as well. This necessitated the development of a new coating based on the high-performance polymer PEEK. At that time, there was no prior experience with processing this material for coatings, which is why STE had to do pioneering work. This solved the problem, and the seals held up, performing better than conventional multi-layer steel seals in the most demanding tests.

In the intervening years, the original sliding coating was adapted and further developed for numerous customer orders. A particularly interesting inquiry came in 2009 from BMW, who were seeking a coating for a lightweight exhaust flange, where essentially the same problem arose as with the cylinder head gaskets. Series production then began almost a year later in 2010, Teflon-free – read more at acs-coating.de .