Indestructible Paint has been associated with Rolls Royce aero engines since the 1950's through the Rockhard range of products. These are seen in use in such areas as magnesium protection in gearboxes and originally as a turbine blade coating. This is still occasionally seen, but now is often replaced by the latest Indestructible range of products, Ipcote and Sermetal W.
As an aero engine manufacturer, Rolls Royce have particularly stringent requirements for products, in such areas as: -
As a result, it was often the case that there were no commercially available materials from the UK or Worldwide industry which Rolls Royce could use to get over problems they had come across. They therefore developed, and still develop, product in their lab to get over the stringent requirements already mentioned. These were then produced in small quantities in their lab to overcome processing problems, or problems on coating in the field.
The PL prefix originated from the Rolls Royce Process Laboratory and the NML from the Non Metallics Laboratory. These were produced, as explained, to over come specific problems, but in the early 1980's it was realised that it was becoming less viable to produce these in the laboratory and Rolls Royce set out to find a small paint and coatings manufacturer with the ability to manufacture these products on their behalf and on behalf of Rolls Royces customers.
Indestructible Paint was chosen, and as they say, the rest is history. These products are now available for sale to all customers and Indestructible Paint has carried on their development often included in the new IP range.
We make a wide range of products particularly for the aero engine industry, some of which may be grouped into families. A good example of this is the attrition range of products, which started off with a multi coat spray application of a Rockhard based product, still used in Japan. This range of materials, 20 or 30 coats thick give a durable coating which the turbine blade tip could wear. The next logical progression was to go for fewer coats of thicker material. This generated a new range of two part products, trowelled into place, such as EPWA27 and NML58. The latest range of materials is NML46, a thick single part material which is rolled to thickness, and glued in place using NML52 adhesive. As a result, we may well have a range of products which appear to do the same job. These are simply logical progressions of products as they have been developed, but rather than change engine drawings we keep making very small quantities of these products. There are of course specific reasons for different products known only to the engine manufactures.
There are occasionally dual sources of the PL range of products, but in many instances Indestructible Paint have now gone further in their development and actually enhanced the original product to be significantly better. An example of this is PL165, where the Indestructible Paint alternative, IP9134, is a polyimide high temperature coating used for example at high temperatures in the E.F.A gearbox at up to 300°C. Another example is PL101, where the direct alternative made by Indestructible Paint is IP9139, but the new IP9139/R1 (IP9029) has been made superior again. It now contains no lead and in fact goes to 650°C as opposed to the original PL101 and IP9139 which would only go to a maximum of 550°C, after which temperature it started to shatter off. IP9029 is also superior in thick film manufacture and unlike American equivalents such at TT-P-28 also has corrosion resistance and resistance to such items as Skydrol and gear box fluid.
