Initially, wire flame spraying was only capable of spraying low melting point materials such as zinc and aluminum. These coatings were used basically to achieve anodic corrosion protection. New flame spraying techniques such as the combustion powder process enabled industry to spray ceramics, self-fluxing alloys, and cermet mixtures. Use of fused coatings of self-fluxing alloys offered materials with greater resistance to wear, erosion, and abrasion.
A further refinement in spraying techniques was plasma spraying with nontransferred arc equipment which allowed materials with extremely high melting points, such as tungsten, to be sprayed. With these newest developments, flame spraying offers a wide spectrum of material selection to solve most of the wear problems in industry economically and efficiently.
