Valence Surface Technologies offers metal finishing services for commercial aerospace, defense, space, and satellite industries. Their services include chemical processing, nondestructive testing, shot peening, painting, plating, and passivation services.
Valence operates ten facilities strategically placed throughout North America in crucial aerospace manufacturing regions. Each location has extensive OEM approvals and offers start-to-finish capabilities for flight-critical components.
Electroless Nickel Plating
Electroless nickel plating (ENP), or electroless nitriding, produces a complex and corrosion-resistant cover over various metal substrates. Requiring minimal power and no electric current to apply the nickel coating, ENP provides an safer option to traditional electroplating for sensitive products like electronics and aerospace parts.
Before beginning ENP processes, the substrate undergoes several preparative steps that remove grease or oils that could inhibit adhesion between nickel and its surface. Thorough cleaning is critical during this phase; its length varies based on the material type of the cleaned component. Once clean, details can be activated in preparation for electroless nickel deposition using acidic solutions or sensitizing agents such as palladium chloride to create nucleation sites for nickel ions to form. Hence, the coating adheres appropriately with its substrate.
Once activated, substrates can be immersed in an electroless nickel solution that contains reducing agents like hydrated sodium hypophosphite to form an autocatalytic reaction that deposits a nickel-phosphorus layer without anodes or electric current, providing more uniform thickness across complex or irregular surfaces.
Electroless nickel plating (ENP) produces a corrosion-resistant finish that resists the formation of rust, pitting, and crevices, while its hard, smooth coverage minimizes friction and wear. Being less porous than electroplated nickel increases resistance against salt water corrosion and carbon dioxide oxide and hydrogen sulfide corrosion; furthermore, it can be applied on numerous metals, including stainless steel, aluminum, copper mild steel hardened steel, zinc die-cast, and brass.
After ENP processing, components are rinsed to remove extra plating chemicals and protect against staining. They then undergo thermal stress relief or passivation treatments for stress relief or improved corrosion resistance before being shipped to customers for final dimensional, visual, and adhesion quality checks before assembly begins. Once received by customers, they start assembling their products.
Chemical Processing
Chemical processing involves altering the chemical structures of raw (bulk) materials to create valuable products for other industries or our daily lives. This can be accomplished using chemical reactions and physical separation processes. Chemical processing is an integral part of everyday life and industry production of many diverse products – it is an essential part of oil refining/petrochemical plants/natural gas processing/polymer manufacturing/pharmaceutical manufacturing/food processing.
Chemical plants are facilities where chemicals are manufactured in a controlled environment using various equipment. Each piece of equipment must be safe and clean to ensure no toxic gases or particles enter the atmosphere. At the same time, there must also be specific safety procedures that workers must abide by to safeguard themselves against harmful chemicals.
The global chemical processing industry is enormous, expected to reach $6 trillion by 2021 and grow another 3.5% between then and 2050. Emerging countries will likely account for 35% of global production and consumption.
Chemical processing industries are essential to our economy; however, their practices can harm humans and the environment. Companies operating within this field must abide by stringent environmental laws and safety procedures when working within this field; additionally, they may need specialized equipment that can withstand harsh operating conditions.
Valence Surface Technologies provides metal finishing services for commercial aerospace, defense, and space/satellite markets. Their services include plating, painting, and spray coating as well as plating painting and spray coating services as well as shot peening/blasting/nondestructive testing/grinding services. Based in Spring, Texas, and with investors such as British Columbia Investment Management Corporation and ATL Partners as investors; for more information, visit their website; this company is part of the Russell 2000 Index.
Painting
Valence Surface Technologies provides metal finishing services to the commercial aerospace, defense, space, and satellite markets. Their services include chemical processing, anodizing, electroplating, industrial painting, chromium conversion coatings, shot peening/blasting services, and nondestructive testing services. In addition, subassembly services are also provided within their facilities for aluminum/titanium components/structures/parts from start to finish.
Valence’s expertise lies in ENP, or Electroless Nickel Plating, which involves depositing a nickel layer onto a substrate without using an external electrical current. This process helps improve corrosion resistance, wear resistance, and solderability – essential to meet customer requirements and help manufacturers meet them more successfully. Furthermore, ENP allows Valence to accommodate various sizes and shapes of parts without restricting flexibility or adaptability.
This company’s painting services also specialize in industrial painting for various uses, including corrosion prevention in challenging environments. Blairsville location employs the use of special BR-127 bond primer that resists corrosion and chemical degradation under extreme conditions – Nadcap certified with customer approval from Aerojet Rocketdyne, BAE Systems, Martin Baker of America L3 Harris Northrop Grumman LMCO, to name just some.
Valence Surface Technologies was established in 2013 and is the largest independently-owned aerospace and defense metal finishing company focused on flight-critical parts. Through the merger of Coast Plating and Chrome Plus International, this company combines the strengths of two top metal finishing firms into one cohesive whole. Their locations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Wichita, and Tulsa provide access to various finishing capabilities, including anodizing, plating, painting, spray coating, shot peening/blasting, and nondestructive testing/grinding.
Non-Destructive Testing
Nondestructive testing (NDT) is essential in industrial and manufacturing environments to ensure the safety of products and assets, from products to infrastructure assets like machinery. NDT techniques enable inspection of components without harming them or changing their future use; this makes nondestructive tests particularly advantageous in production settings where stopping operations for destructive tests could cost lost productivity; advancements in NDT enable many inspection methods while equipment runs.
Radiography, ultrasonics, eddy current testing, magnetic particle inspection, liquid penetrant testing, and visual inspection are the six most widely utilized nondestructive testing (NDT) methods. Each of these is divided further into various techniques that may be better suited to specific applications or have more general applications.
Radiography, or nondestructive testing (NDT), uses radiation to analyze materials or structures. Often employed by aerospace industries but also used in petrochemical, metals, and automotive sectors that demand high levels of quality control, this form of NDT can detect cracks, voids, laminations corrosion defects in metal and composite parts and components, as well as any defects.
Ultrasonic NDT uses sound waves to inspect materials and structures. It is a widely-used technique used to detect cracks, voids, looseness, and other defects across many materials – it is beneficial for welding inspections.
Eddy current NDT uses an electric field to examine the internal structure of materials or parts. This method can detect cracks, voids, and other flaws not detectable using other NDT methods and locations of discontinuities within materials like slag inclusions, trapped air pockets, or any other imperfections.
Magnetic particle NDT measures the integrity of materials using magnetic fields and particles. This technique involves coating materials with iron particles to detect disruptions in their magnetic field flow; disruptions indicate material defects beneath.
Visual inspection is the core form of nondestructive testing (NDT) and can be conducted using just your eyes or an RVI tool like a camera. An RVI camera allows inspectors to examine an object without direct access remotely; this type of inspection can be carried out on surfaces and inside machines that do not allow direct observation and is conducted via drones and robots equipped with cameras.
