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Coatings for steel runners sliding on ice

I'm looking for coating processes and products to be applied to steel runners for sliding on ice. Extremely low friction coefficient on ice and good scratch resistance are required.

It is preferable to mantain the color of the steel after the treatment. Both normal and stainless steels should be coated.

The coating may not be removed with isopropanol (isoprophilic alcohol).

I appreciate if anybody can give me references about scientific papers about tribology between steel and ice.

Nicolas Belli
- Italy

1999

Nicholas,

I am afraid that you don't have steel on ice. Under pressure ice melts (regelation) and the steel (or any other surface) is moving on a film of water. This is a property of ice.

Donald M. Mattox
Society of Vacuum Coaters
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Donald is the author of:
"Handbook of Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) Processing" (2010) [on AbeBooks or eBay or Amazon affil links]
and "The Foundations of Vacuum Coating Technology" (2018) on AbeBooks or eBay or Amazon affil links]

1999

Nicolas:

REM Chemicals in Southington, CT USA has a metal finishing process named FERROMIL that is used to refine ice skating steel blades and a process named MAGALLOY for Stainless Steel blades. It is not a coating but a surface refinement process that produces surface finishes of less than Ra 3 microinch (0.075 microns). REM is also located in Sandy, Bedforshire, England and Milano, Italy.

Regards,

Bill Boatright

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