New Markets and Applications for Thermal Spray Coatings in India

Notwithstanding the fact that the thermal spray technologies have globally proliferated into virtually all major industry sectors, the industrial acceptance of these process in India had been historically sluggish. However, the scenario in the country with respect to the thermal spray technologies is rapidly changing.  A meaningful indicator of the obvious growth of thermal spraying is the spurt in the number of job shops that can now offer thermal spray coating service.  There already exist more than twenty thermal spray job shops across the country and the number of captive units meeting in-house coating needs has also increased in recent years.

The establishment of the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy & New Materials (ARCI) in Hyderabad in the early 1990s has also provided the much-needed momentum for R&D efforts in the field. The efforts at ARCI have been devoted to indigenous equipment development and this has already benefited the Indian industry by bringing detonation spray systems into the industrial mainstream. The institution has also ensured that research on frontier areas like Cold Gas Dynamic Spraying and Solution Precursor Plasma Spraying is also active in the country.  

The non-availability of indigenous sources for thermal spray equipment as well as feedstock materials had been one of the key factors hampering growth of the thermal spray industry in India.  The increasing adoption of thermal spraying by the Indian industry has been spurred by the fact that home-grown Indian companies are manufacturing spray systems, handling equipment and performance evaluation test rigs that are already being exported to foreign countries. The above factors, along with the healthy growth trends observed recently, suggest a very bright future for thermal spray technologies in India.  This paper provides an overview of the country status, charting the growth of thermal spray coatings in India in recent times.