The precondition of a cost efficient wire arc spraying process is an ideal process setup according to the wire material. Modern power supplies are equipped with electronic control circuits to ensure stable arc conditions at the wire tips. For high quality wire arc sprayed coatings it is necessary to control the melting energy within the arc. That has to be done to get  uniform droplet formation conditions. By the use of a PID controller to maintain the set spray parameters, it is possible to reduce the spray voltage down to 15 V for zinc as feedstock material. Furthermore temperature dependent parameter fluctuations can be compensated with the electronic controller, while working at maximum capacity with 100% duty time.

The paper discusses the influence of a new power supply with regard to the process stability and the enhancement of former power supply based process limitation as well as the operator guidance.