SilcoTek Supplemental Services

Our Additional Services Increase the Value of Your Coated Products

At SilcoTek®, we partner with each customer to ensure we deliver the world's best coating services in an efficient and high-quality manner.  We also offer many other supporting services to make it easy to get a finished coated product that is ready to function out of the box. Our supplemental services reduce shipping costs and supply chain complexity for our customers.

Supplemental Services Offered

Out Plant Services

Coordinate outplant orders to better smooth your supply chain. Save in-house supply chain management time by letting us manage sub-plant operations relating to coating preparation including:

  • Cleaning services
    • We'll coordinate with out-plant cleaning shops to make the coating process as efficient as possible.
  • Heat treatment services
    • We work with well known and highly qualified shops to assure your parts are properly treated.

Surface Preparation and Precision Cleaning Services

Need your part surface precision cleaned or surface modification for your process? SilcoTek has spent years developing surface preparation methods designed to minimize contamination from oils and other contaminants.  We offer surface preparation and cleaning options for large and small parts. Go to our FAQ page to learn more about part size and capabilities.

  • Nitric Acid Stripping 
    • Services include coating removal and copper/nickel stripping. 
  • Surface Preparation Treatments
    • Rust removal, oxidation removal and basic heat treatment services.
  • Vapor Stripping 
    • Precision cleaning, size limitations apply.
  • Ultrasonic Cleaning
    • Precision cleaning in ultrasonic cleaning baths.

Metal Working

  • Tubing cutting and deburring services.
  • Tooling/fixturing design and fabrication.

Logistics Support

  • Kit packaging, packaging parts for down stream manufacturing or assembly.
  • Order shipment consolidations.
  • Part segregation, part serializing or segregation for down process identification.
  • Custom transport tooling, custom packaging design (outsourced or internally developed) fixture design and fabrication.
  • Part disassembly, basic part disassembly upon receipt.
  • Nut and ferrule disassembly and re-assembly.
  • Data records and quality reports.
  • Tier-one packaging and labeling.

Materials Analysis Services

SilcoTek In-House Characterization Capabilities

  • Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR): Nicolet model 380
    • Accessories:
      • Specular Apertured Grazing Angle – for surface analysis
      • Attenuated Total Reflectance – for liquid and solid bulk analysis
      • Transmission – for through-sample measurement
  • Coating Thickness: Filmetrics spectroscopic film thickness analysis
    • Filmetrics F20 – for bulk surface measurements on reflective surfaces
      • Contact probe
      • Sample stage
      • Extension contact probe
      • Spot size 1mm
      • Thickness range = 15nm – 70μm, wavelength range = 380-1050nm
    • Filmetrics F40 – for precise, focused measurements on reflective and rough surfaces
      • 15X microscope system
      • Motorized X-Y stage for mapping
      • Spot size = 1μm
      • Thickness range = 4nm – 40μm, wavelength range = 190-1100nm
  • Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS): Gamry Series G 300 Potentiostat/Galvanostat
    • Primarily used by SilcoTek to characterize the electrochemical impedance of our depositions
  • Goniometer: ramé-hart model 200
    • Static single-point contact angle measurement
    • Polar and non-polar liquids
      • Water
      • Hexadecane
      • Other liquids are possible
  • Tensiometer: Kruss K100
    • Dynamic contact angle measurement on bulk surfaces
    • Advancing and receding contact angle for more complete surface energy characterization
    • Polar and non-polar liquids
      • Water
      • Hexadecane
      • Other liquids are possible
  • Cyclic Salt Fog Chamber: Weice Testing Instrument WTS90+C
    • Typically running ASTM G85 – based cyclic salt fog exposure testing
      • Acidified
      • Non-acidified
  • Non-destructive metal composition analysis: Niton XRF Analyzer
    • Percentage sensitivity detection of 25 elements from S to U.

Outside Testing Services

SilcoTek maintains a strong partnership with the Pennsylvania State University in the local region and collaborates globally with private materials testing laboratories to further enhance our capabilities. Our staff scientists are specially trained to conduct in-depth analysis of our coatings on sophisticated instrumentation, adding value to customers' development and validation of their coated products. These additional outside testing services include but are not limited to:

  • Raman spectroscopy to analyze coating crystallinity
  • ICP-MS to measure coating purity
  • TEM for assessing coating microstructure and functional layer thickness
  • XPS to analyze coating composition
  • SEM to assess coating porosity
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Step 1:

First, contact us! 

Request a quote and provide drawings or photos as necessary. Send parts to SilcoTek for coating service.

After receiving drawings or a part description we’ll send you a coating quote. Our team will respond within one business day to your coating quote request, we may ask for any additional information needed to issue an accurate quote. We’ll also give you shipping instructions along with an RA# for shipping your parts to our coating facility. After receiving the quote, the customer will disassemble the part as needed and ship the items to be coated to our coating facility. Because our chemical vapor deposition process requires dedicated specialized equipment and processing, coating is only applied at our facility.

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Step 2:

Getting the Order

Receipt, review and order acknowledgment.

Once received, your parts are inspected to ensure we got everything you sent. We also photograph the parts for verification and traceability. If there are any questions or “red flags” before coating, our Customer Service Representative will contact you to review your order and any potential concerns with processing. Substrates listed on our material compatibility chart as “not treatable” will either be returned directly to you or along with your compatible parts after coating. Once everything is confirmed, our customer service team sends you an order acknowledgment email with our ship by date.

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Expedite Program

SilcoTek takes special care to collaborate with all our customers and provide exceptional service that exceeds your expectations. Our manufacturing process is designed to expedite every order that we process. For those customers who are in a crunch and need faster turn around times, we now offer a 2-tiered expedite program! Customers who need to expedite their lead time by 3-4 business days can take advantage of our expedite coating service. To improve lead times by 5 or more business days, customers can utilize our priority coating service. Please see the expedite PDF below for the fee structure on expedited services. It is important to note that while we hope to accommodate every expedite and priority processing request to assist customers who require improved lead times, there will be times that we must decline due to high order volumes at our facility. It is critical to us that no customer who accommodates SilcoTek’s standard coating process lead times ever experiences longer turnaround as a result of honoring expedite requests.

While our ultimate goal is to reduce S.T.A.G. (ship time average goal) as much as possible, parts occasionally need to be re-worked to ensure the coating meets our specifications and high expectations for quality. Rest assured we understand the urgency of your parts and will do everything we can to coat them quickly and with the top-notch quality you’ve come to expect from us. Visit our FAQ page for any additional information related.

 

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Step 3:

Starting the Process

Surface Preparation

SilcoTek uses proprietary surface preparation methods in order to ensure the best coating possible. It is important to know that any surface imperfections like scratches, rough surfaces, or widely varying surface characteristics, will be highlighted by the coating process, not hidden. That’s why creating a pristine, contaminant free surface prior to coating is critical for optimal results and good visual appearance. Unfortunately metal working and machining processes can impart contamination throughout the part surface that is hidden to the naked eye, so be sure to help us understand everything your parts have been exposed to prior to sending them to us for coating.

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Step 4:

Applying the Coating

Chemical Vapor Deposition Coating Process

After a thorough surface preparation, our technicians load customer parts into a vacuum vessel corresponding to the size of the parts. This vessel is placed in a large oven and connected to the raw material - gas - then heats to temperatures near 400° C. Throughout this process, a proprietary blend of gas enters the vessel and starts a reaction which diffuses the treatment into the molecular lattice of the substrate, forming the ultra-thin SilcoTek coating that so many have come to recognize and trust.

To illustrate this, we coated a 1/16” OD, .4mm ID tube with multiple bends both internally and externally. After coating, the tube was cut open to examine the coating at the center-most point inside the tube. In addition to the external coating on the tube, a quick visual inspection shows the vibrant purple-colored SilcoTek coating inside the narrow bore. The thickness of the coating throughout the tube was verified by a Filmetrics F40-Series Thin Film Analyzer and confirmed to meet our specifications. SilcoTek coatings are not applied with line-of-sight processes like spraying that lead to inconsistent deposition and uncoated areas. With our process, 100% of your parts are coated, even if the design is complex or the pathways are tortuous.

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Step 5:

Quality inspection

Once the coating process is complete, your parts are unloaded and moved to the inspection area. SilcoTek Technicians then visually inspect each part to ensure conformal thickness and proper aesthetics and then review coating run data to verify all process parameters meet specification. Parts that pass inspection are issued a coating certification adherent to ISO 9001.

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Step 6:

Packaging and Shipping

After the parts have passed inspection, we package them so that they are secure and won’t be damaged when traveling to the field, plant or back to the factory. Customer packaging is only re-used for return shipping upon request. If, at receipt, incoming packaging is deemed inadequate for secure shipping, SilcoTek will use new packaging to ensure coated parts are returned safely. If shipping out of the United States, our international customer support specialist will work closely with you to arrange logistics efficiently.

Once the parts are ready to go, we send you one last email to confirm that they are shipping by your preferred method. They’re now coated, to spec, and ready to make what was impossible possible!

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