Hardfacing, Chrome carbide, Overlay, Wear plates, or Chrome Carbide Overlay (CCO) Plate – what is the difference?
By Phil Leonard, Managing Director – Red Dog Linings
Within the abrasion resistant products industrial sector, globally so many different terms are used for principally what is the same product. Having recently appointed a marketing consultant when rebranding our business from Triten to Red Dog Linings; one of the primary goals we had was to maintain SEO ranking worldwide for our primary products and services.
This proved more difficult than first anticipated, why? When explaining our wear plate product range to my new colleague, I realised as an industry the wear plate manufacturer’s use many different terms to describe the same thing. This is multiplied with the number of resellers who are rebranding manufacturer’s chrome carbide wear plate. As if this is not bad enough, with the variety in supply base comes varying quality standards and consequently inconsistent up time performance levels in service for the customer.
Within the manufacture of 400 Hb AR steels there are a reduced number of suppliers who have set industry standards for the manufacture of 400Hb abrasion resistant plate, manufactured in steel mills around the world with associated high barrier to entry costs.
However, within the chrome carbide hardfaced plate industry entry barriers are lower and with that come a wide range of quality available but the same product can be called a range of different names by each supplier including:
- Chrome Carbide Hardfaced Plate
- Chromium Carbide Hardfaced Plate
- Hardfaced Plate
- Overlay Plate
- Wear Plate
- Chrome Carbide Overlay (CCO)
Intrinsically the welding technology behind the product is the key, with the significant majority of producers electing to use Flux cored wires to manufacture their products. Where Red Dog Linings Limited differs is with the use of “Bulk Welding” technology which removes the need for the use of flux cored wires from the process.
This gives Red Dog Linings control back over the wear plate overlay chemistry, which would not be present if Red Dog Linings were reliant on flux cored wire suppliers for wear plate manufacture. As a result of this control the technical welding make up of the wear plates can be controlled to give maximum client performance whilst in operation. Critically this can lead to reducing plant downtime and significant process improvement which can maximise bottom line profit for the end user.
So how does the customer decide which wear plate product they need for their application. Please read my previous article on ‘What to look out for when buying hardfaced chromium carbide plates’
http://rdlinings.com/news/what-to-look-out-for-when-buying-hardfaced-chromium-carbide-plates/
