Home / Industries
The common thread is not an industry — it is a part made from a corrosion-resistant alloy that also has to slide, seal, or resist abrasion. These are the places that keeps happening.
Typical parts. Filling nozzles, portioning blades, auger and screw conveyors, mixer shafts and seals, valve seats in clean-in-place circuits.
Why it matters. Lubricants are prohibited on contact surfaces, so stainless slides dry against stainless. Add daily caustic and acid washdown and you get galling and abrasive wear on parts that cannot be coated with anything that might chip into product.
Typical parts. Tablet press punches and dies, aseptic valve internals, single-use system fittings, agitator components, powder-handling hardware.
Why it matters. Abrasive powders and validated cleaning cycles attack sliding surfaces, while particle generation and coating flake-off are unacceptable contamination risks. A diffusion case cannot shed.
Typical parts. Gas-line fittings and ferrules, diaphragm and bellows valve internals, mass-flow controller components, wafer-handling mechanisms.
Why it matters. Metal-to-metal seals must make up and break repeatedly without galling or generating particles, in a system where outgassing and surface cleanliness are specifications in their own right.
Typical parts. Duplex and super-duplex fasteners, connectors and clamps, valve stems and trim, choke internals, downhole tool components.
Why it matters. Chloride service rules out anything that traps electrolyte at a coating interface, including the tungsten carbide thermal spray often specified on valve trim. Galling on large stainless threaded connections is a well-known field failure, and it happens exactly where replacement is most expensive.
Typical parts. Deck hardware, shafting and sleeves, hatch and hinge mechanisms, pump and thruster components, fastener assemblies.
Why it matters. Constant salt exposure combined with intermittent sliding contact. Coatings fail at the interface and then corrode underneath; a diffusion case has no interface to fail at.
Typical parts. Shafts and sleeves, wear rings, impellers, valve seats and stems, spools, cylinder rods and rotary group components.
Why it matters. This is the canonical application. Sliding stainless against stainless with corrosive media, tight running clearances and cavitation or erosive attack on high-velocity surfaces — the parts that usually get a tungsten carbide spray or hard chrome. A diffusion case replaces both without grinding or plating.
Typical parts. Surgical instrument jaws and hinges, orthopaedic instrumentation, endoscopic mechanisms, implant trial components.
Why it matters. Hundreds of autoclave cycles, repeated articulation of stainless on stainless, and no tolerance for delamination or particulate release inside a patient or a sterile field.
Typical parts. Fuel system components, valve train and linkage parts, brake and clutch hardware, turbocharger and exhaust fittings, fasteners.
Why it matters. Weight-optimised stainless and nickel alloy parts run at high contact stress with aggressive fuels and additives, where a heavier or coated part is not an acceptable substitute.
Typical parts. Printed 316L and 17-4 PH components, lattice structures, internal cooling and flow channels, printed manifolds and heat exchangers.
Why it matters. Printed parts often have wear surfaces and internal passages that cannot be reached by any line-of-sight process. Gaseous diffusion hardens internal channel walls that a coating physically cannot enter.
Typical parts. Valve stems and seats, control-rod drive and fuel-handling mechanisms, pump shafts and wear rings, fasteners and threaded closures in austenitic and nickel alloys.
Why it matters. Components must resist galling and wear in high-purity water without lubricants and without any coating that could spall into the coolant circuit. A diffusion case is part of the alloy and keeps its corrosion resistance.
Typical parts. Weapon and mechanism components, naval and marine hardware, actuators and hydraulic parts, connectors and fasteners in stainless and nickel alloys.
Why it matters. Equipment has to work after long storage, salt exposure and minimal maintenance. Hardening the alloy itself stops galling and wear without adding a coating that can chip, corrode underneath or change fits.
Failure modes we address
Not every wear problem is solved by a harder surface. But these are the patterns where a diffusion case on a corrosion-resistant alloy is usually the right answer — and where a coating or a conventional case-hardening cycle is usually the wrong one.
Describe your failure modeShare a drawing, the alloy, and the failure mode you are fighting. We will recommend a process route and run a sample trial with a metallurgical report before you commit to production.