Thermal Spray 2003: Advancing the Science & Applying the Technology, (Ed.) C. Moreau and B.

Marple,
Published by ASM International, Materials Park, Ohio, USA, 2003

On-line Optical Diagnostics of a Rotating Internal Diameter Plasma Spray Gun

Used for Coating of Cylinder Bores in Automotive Industry
Hämäläinen E., Kriikka N.
Oseir Ltd., Tampere, Finland

Barbezat G.
Sulzer Metco AG, Wohlen, Switzerland

Abstract cylinder bores. Of the variety of processes, atmospheric

Coating of cylinder bores using plasma spraying is a growing
application of thermal spraying in automotive industry. The
Sulzer Metco RotaPlasma manipulator provides continuous
rotation of the internal diameter plasma gun and enables a
cost-efficient and reliable coating of the cylinder blocks. The
development towards more advanced quality control systems
and closed-loop spray control systems requires an on-line
measurement of the most important particle and spray
parameters such as particle temperature, velocity and flux.
However, the small dimensions of the plasma plume of an
internal diameter spray gun together with the rotation of the
gun makes the measurement difficult, if not impossible, for
many traditional diagnostics equipment. In this work,
SprayWatch, an imaging CCD camera based diagnostics
system from Oseir Ltd. was used for measuring particle and
spray parameters during the rotation of an internal diameter
plasma spray gun. The results show that the SprayWatch
camera system is a promising tool for both development and
production monitoring of cylinder bore coating process, as
well as for realising a closed-loop spray control system.
Introduction
Thermal spray processing has found a wide range of
applications in the automotive industry [1-3]. An important
and rapidly growing application is the wear protection of
cylinder bores in aluminium cast engine blocks. Traditionally,
cast iron liners have been used in engine blocks manufactured
from aluminium. However, replacing the cylinder liners by a
thermally sprayed coating has been showed to have several
advantages, especially the reduced size and weight of the
engine, lower friction, reduced emissions and longer lifecycle
of the engine [4].
Different thermal spraying processes, such as plasma, HVOF
and wire arc spraying, can be used to provide coatings for
plasma spraying (APS) have been found to best fit the special
requirements of the coating of cylinder bores. The main
advantages of plasma spraying compared to other processes
include low heat transfer into the substrate, high degree of
freedom in choosing the coating materials, highly reliable
melting process [5].The technology is fully developed and has
been used in series production in Europe. The cost-
performance ratio is also highly attractive. For large volumes
the cost of coating is even lower than that of using cast iron
cylinder liners [6].
Plasma spraying of cylinder bores of automotive engine
blocks is a demanding application where high level of coating
quality and reproducibility play an important role. Although
the coating of a single cylinder takes only about 60 seconds,
the coating quality has to be maintained through the thousands
of cylinder bores coated every day, every day of the year.
Main conditions for high quality coatings are fulfilled by
selection of appropriate spraying equipment and optimised
spray parameters, specification and quality control of the
sprayed feedstock material, optimal surface preparation, and
reliable function of the spray gun and the whole spray system.
However, because of the high requirements of the application,
it is advantageous to implement other quality control methods,
too.
The nature of coating formation mechanism in thermal
spraying, i.e. rapid melting of fine solid particles with a range
of particles size, acceleration of these molten particles towards
the cold substrate, flattening of the droplets, solidification and
rapid cooling, makes thermal spraying a highly demanding
concerning the spray process control [7]. The coating structure
and quality is influenced by the properties of the molten
particles (temperature, velocity, size, amount, distribution of
particles and properties) depositing on the substrate and
conditions on the substrate (temperature and heat loading to
the substrate, relative movements of the substrate and the

1249
spray gun. To ensure that the best possible quality is
maintained, as many of these parameters as possible have to
be measured and controlled.

Much research has been devoted to the development of in-situ

optical diagnostic methods for laboratory and industrial use in
order to measure and monitor the actual properties of
thermally sprayed particles. However, currently there are only
few systems available on the market that fill the needs of an
industrial user. Unlike in the research field, properties suchs as
compact size, robustnes, reliability and ease of operation play
an important role in industry. The special case of spraying of
cylinder bores sets more requirements; the system must be
synchronized to the rotation of the gun and measurement
must be possible from inside the cylinder bore.

The Sulzer Metco F210 Internal Diameter Plasma Gun

and the RotaPlasma Rotating Gun Manipulator

To apply the coating to the internal wall of the cylinder bore, it

is practical to rotate the spray gun while the cylinder block
remains stationary. Rotating the cylinder block would be
technically difficult and inefficient. Furthermore, the plasma
gun has to fit in the cylinder bore with sufficient spray
distance to achieve the required coating properties. In this
work, Sulzer Metco F210 internal diameter gun was rotated by
the RotaPlasma rotating gun manipulator. In a 80 mm bore the
F210 allows a spray distance of 50 mm, which ensures the
accelaration and heating of the powder for satisfactory
deposition.
Figure 1 shows an engine block coating station with three
RotaPlasma systems. Mounted on a robot or a vertical
movement device, the manipulotor provides rotation of the
gun up to 250 rpm. In this work, a speed of 200 rpm was used.
It is also possible to rotate the gun eccentrically so that the
maximum spraying distance can be used.
The SprayWatch Thermal Spray Monitor
SprayWatch 2i from Oseir Ltd. (Tampere, Finland) is an
imaging system for quality control of industrial thermal spray
processes. It is based on a digital CCD camera and special
spectrally resolving optics (pat. pending). The optics, together
with the computer control of the camera and a dedicated, real-
time image processing software enables on-line measurement
of the velocity, temperature and number distribution of in-
flight particles in the spray, together with the parameters of the
spray plume such as divergence, width and angle.
Figure 1: Engine block coating station with three RotaPlasma
systems.
The system consists of two parts: a compact, air-cooled
camera head and an industrial PC computer. There are two
versions of the camera head. The standard version has servo
motors to automatically adjust the focal lenght and the
aperture of the camera optics for requirements of different
thermal spray processes. In this work, the Compact version of
the camera head (Figure 1) was used. It is designed for
production line use where the same process is monitored from
day to day. Because of this, automatic control is not necessary
and the servo motors have been dropped out, making the
camera head smaller and lighter than that of the standard
version. The compact size was important in the measurement
of the RotaPlasma system, because the camera had to be
placed as close to the rotating gun as possible to be able to
measure from inside the cylinder bore.
The SprayWatch camera images the particle spray right before
the particles hit the substrate and form the coating. The camera
is equipped with an electronic shutter capable of microsecond
scale exposure times. This makes it possible to detect
individual particles in the spray and measure their velocities
based on the length of their traces drawn on the CCD chip
during the known exposure time. Virtually simultaneously the
camera takes images of the spray through the two narrow band

1250
optical filters placed on the CCD detector using an exposure
time of a few milliseconds. The average particle temperature
is measured by two color pyrometry using the two spray
intensity signals. The measurement principle is illustrated in
Figure 3 and described in detail by Vuoristo et al [7].
rotate together with the gun, the measurement had to be
synchronised to the rotation of the gun.
Normally, when measuring non-rotating guns and external
spraying, SprayWatch measures the spray from the side. In
this case, however, the only practical optical access to the
spray was from the top. So the SprayWatch was set to about
250 mm from the spray axis in the way shown in Figure 4.

The camera was synchronised to the rotating gun with a

magnetic trigger. A small permanent magnet was attached to
the rotating part of the gun so that it passed a stationary sensor
4. on every turn. The small electrical signal generated in the
1.
sensor was amplified by the triggering electronics and led to
the camera. Because the rotation speed of the gun was not
more than about 200 rpm, it was relatively easy to find the
2. 3. right timing for the trigger by adjusting the position of the
permanent magnet and the delay of the triggering circuit.

Figure 2: SprayWatch 2i Compact camera head.1: Air-cooled

enclosure 2:Front plate with window 3:Mounting plate 4:
Camera control and data transfer cable

Imaged area
34 mm
28 mm

Section A Section B
Visual image
Particle detection and count
Particle distribution Spray temperature measurement
Particle velocity measurement Spray intensity profile
Particle temperature measurement

Figure 3: Measurement principle of the average particle

temperature in the SprayWatch system. Imaged area is divided
into two sections by the spectrally resolving optics. Section A
is imaged through clear optics enabling individual particle
detection and measurement. Section B is imaged through two
optical filters in different wavelength ranges, allowing the
two-colour pyrometric spray temperature measurement. The
size of the imaged area is adjustable and may vary from
approximately 20 x 15 mm to 35 x 26 mm.

The spray images are analysed and the data is processed by a

dedicated software running on a standard PC computer
system. The software is fully automatic and also has data
logging and reporting functions.
The Measurement Configuration
To measure the rotating plasma spray of the RotaPlasma
system, two problems had to be solved. The camera had to be
placed so that it had an optical access to the spray during
spraying and, since it was not possible to make the camera to
Figure 4: The measurement configuration. SprayWatch
camera head is synchronized to the rotation of the gun with a
magnetic trigger.
Results
Figure 5 shows an image of the rotating spray recorded by
SprayWatch from outside the cylinder bore. The center of the
image is approximately at 50 mm from the gun nozzle. The

1251
measurement of particle parameters was carried out without
problems.

Figure 6: Screenshot from the SprayWatch software showing

the distributions of particle count, velocity and intensity.

Figure 5: Spray image taken by the SprayWatch system from The test showed that the SprayWatch system is able to
the rotating plasma gun. measure the temperature, the velocity and the relative number
of particles in a rotating spray without any problems when the
The measured particle temperature and velocity together with gun is outside the cylinder bore.
the spraying parameters used are presented in table 1.
When the gun was driven inside the cylinder bore the situation
was more difficult. The main problem was the fact that the
Table 1: Spraying parameters used in the measurement and
spraying distance was only 50 mm and the bright plasma
measured average values of particle velocity and temperature.
plume extended to about 40-45 mm from the gun nozzle.
Parameter Figure 7. shows the spray image in this case, with measured
Argon (l/min) 50.0 particle marked with numbers and lines. The usable
Hydrogen (l/min) 4.0 measurement area is now only about 5-10 mm because the
Current (A) 320 clouds of plasma gases and vapors saturate the image and
Argon powder gas (l/min) 4.0 decrease the contrast of the image. The SprayWatch software
was not directly able to measure the particle parameters in this
Powder type Low alloyed
case. Improvement and optimization of the particle detection
carbon steel algorithm was needed to enable the particle detection in these
Powder size (nominal, µm) +5 -45 conditions. The algorithm was developed to better take into
Feed rate (g/min) 60 account the low contrast of the particle images and the noise
Gun rotation speed (rpm) 200 generated by the vapor clouds and the particles bouncing back
Spraying distance 50 mm from the cylinder wall. The developed algorithm was able to
Bore diameter 80 mm reliably measure the velocity and intensity of up to about 30
Average particle temperature 2080 particles per image frame.
(°C)
Average particle velocity (m/s) 95 Simultaneous particle temperature measurement was not
possible with SprayWatch inside of the cylinder bore for two
Figure 6. shows a screenshot from the distribution display of reasons; the usable measurement area between the plasma
the SprayWatch software showing the measured distributions plume and the cylinder wall is too small for the double stripe
of particles and particle velocity across the spray. It is seen filter of the SprayWatch, and the emission from the plasma jet
that the distributions of particle velocity and temperature are would cause error on the temperature measurement. Instead of
relatively flat. This indicates good spray gun design, but also the particle temperature, the intensity of the particles (which is
the fact that the measurement was done from the top of the also measured by SprayWatch) can be monitored inside the
spray, from the same direction as the particle injection. cylinder bore. Changes in the intensity would then indicate
Because the particle injection was symmetrical in this changes in the particle temperature.
direction, the distributions of the particle parameters are also
relatively symmetrical.

1252

Cylinder wall
Particle bouncing back
from the wall
Figure 7: Spray image from inside a cylinder bore captured
by the SprayWatch system.
Summary and Conclusions
The test shows that it is possible to use the SprayWatch 2i
system to measure the particle parameters in Sulzer Metco
RotaPlasma system. This opens interesting possibilities for the
automotive industry. The SprayWatch could be used as a
quality control tool by monitoring the spraying process on the
product line continuously. The possibility to detect problems
during spraying would reduce the amount and cost of errors
dramatically. If there is a problem in the coating process of a
cylinder block, the block could be removed from the
production line immeaditely instead of passing it further to
machining and other phases of the process.
Because SprayWatch measures real, physical particle
parameters, it is not only possible to detect the problems but in
many cases also tell what the problem is because the
1253
relationships of particle properties to the spraying parameters
and conditions are relatively well known. Furthermore, it
would be possible to establish a closed loop control strategy
(dashed line between the SprayWatch computer and the spray
controller in Figure 4) based on the measured parameters. This
would allow the spray controller to automatically adjust the
spraying parameters to optimise the coating quality. In some
cases it would be possible to detect problems, like a small drift
in the particle parameters, before they start affecting the
quality and then solve the problem immeaditely.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the spray technicians, electronics
engineers and other staff of Sulzer Metco AG, Wohlen and
Oseir Ltd., Tampere who made this work possible.
References
1. F. Nadeau, L. Pouliot and J. Blain, “Practical
Applications of Spray Plume Sensors in the Aeronautical
and Automotive Industries”, in Proc. 1st Int. Thermal
Spray Conf., C.C. Berndt (Ed.), ASM International,
Materials Park, OH, USA, (2000) 1131-1134.
2. McCune, "Thermal spraying of cylinder bore surfaces for
aluminum engine cylinder blocks", Welding Journal, 41-
47, 1995
3. Byrnes and M. Kramer, "Method and apparatus for the
application of thermal spray coating onto aluminum
engine cylinder bores", ASM/ESD Meeting, Romulus,
1997
4. Wuest, G. Barbezat, S. Keller, "The key advantages of the
plasma-powder spray process for the thermal spray
coating of cylinder bores in automotive industry", SAE
Int. Congress, Detroit, 1997
5. G. Barbezat, “The State of the Art of the Internal Plasma
Spraying on Cylinder Bore in AlSi Cast Alloys”,
International Journal of Automotive Technology, Vol. 2,
No. 2, pp. 47-52 (2001)
6. G. Barbezat, J. Schmid, “Plasma Spray Coating and
Subsequent Honing of Cylinder Bores”, MTZ
Motortechnische Zeitschrift 62 Vol. 4 (2001)
7. P. Vuoristo et al, “Optimisation and Monitoring of Spray
Parameters by a CCD Camera Based Imaging Thermal
Spray Monitor”, Proc. International Thermal Spray
Conference, ASM International, Materials Park, OH,
USA, (2001)