The Challenge: An office furniture manufacturer was plating the vertical riser for office chairs with traditional plating and then greasing. The traditional grease lubricants used would attract dust and dirt, ultimately acting like an abrasive compound. As a result, the up and down cycling and the side to side movement of the chair would become inconsistent and wear our prematurely, often having to be replaced under warranty.
The Solution: As the combination of plating and then greasing the part was actually the root cause of the problem, DECC had to develop a solution that eliminated these variables.DECC applied an abrasive resistant, PTFE loaded release coating. Utilizing our state of the art electrostatic spray equipment, DECC was able to control a uniform thickness from top to bottom (12″ to 18″ lengths) and around the whole diameter (2″) of .3 to .8 mils.
The Result: After 100,000 cycles under a load simulation to determine effectiveness of the coating application, the test fixture was turned off. Although the coating did exhibit some wear, the chair performance was not adversely affected. As a result of DECC’s creative problem solving, our customer has saved tremendous amounts of money by eliminating warranty issues while changing their customer’s negative image of the company due to a poor quality product.