Problem:
One tampon manufacturer found that collets in the production line were suffering from wear from cardboard and therefore wanted to increase wear protection while reducing friction.

Solution:
Nedox SF-2 seemed to be the perfect coating for this application but the customer came back with another problem - they were having premature fatigue failure of the base material.  He wanted to know if anything in the coating could be causing this because when they made new parts, they started to run them without coating due to time constraints and had no fatigue failures.

Having investigated the issue, it turns out the customer had parts Electropolished before sending them to Magnaplate.  The ASM Metals Handbook states that "Removal of not more the 1 mil on the diameter of steel fatigue specimens by 'electropolishing' can lower the endurance limit from 10 million cycles without failure to failure at 100,000 to 120,000 cycles at 75 ksi.  The decrease in diameter is not responsible for the loss.  Grinding and hand finishing to the same undersize has no adverse effect".

Apparently the lowering of the fatigue strength was due to the removal of, or the inability to produce, compressive stress in metal surfaces.   The customer was delighted with Magnaplate's investigative findings and this project highlighted the need to find out every operation being performed on the part!  To date, this customer has continued to turn to General Magnaplate as a consultant and for their coating needs.

Nedox is a superior alternative to other common industry coatings such as nickel plating, electroless nickel, sulfamate nickel, co-dep electroless nickel (or EN), polymer impregnated (or infused) electroless nickel.