News & Press

 

Plasmait Wins Enquete 2008 Award for Innovation
Vienna, November 2008

Austrian Cooperation Research (ACR) held its third Enquete 2008 award ceremony in Vienna. At the ceremony Plasmait GmbH was presented with the innovation award for its research project, which was conducted in collaboration with the institute Zentrum für Elektronenmikroskopie Graz (ZFE).

ACR Innovation Award
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Plasmait wins Fast Forward 2007 Innovation Award
September 2007

Plasmait won a Fast Forward 2007 Innovation Award organised by Styrian Development Agency (SFG). The competition joined 125 companies who presented their latest innovation projects. Plasmait won the €10,000 prize in the category of small companies. Plasmait presented its plasma based heat and surface treatment technology for wire, strip and tube. Plasmait’s technology has proved to add commercial value to a number of applications and has been praised above all for its environmental benefits such as replacement of acid cleaning and fluxing in the nonferrous applications.

As the winner of the Styrian award, Plasmait was automatically enrolled in the Austrian and European Innovation competitions.

Video Clip: Plasmait 1 minute Overview
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Heat Treatment of Surface Martensite in Spring Wire Manufacturing
Summer 2006

Plasmait has introduced PlasmaFLASH - a new heat treatment machine to deal with surface Martensite on steel wire. Martensite is an undesired crystal form of steel that can be a result of wire shaving. Wire shaving is commonly used by spring manufacturers to achieve scale-free surface with as little contamination as possible. The result of steel wire shaving is usually surface martensite. Martensitic surface makes further drawing virtually impossible. In a traditional process martensitic surface is first heat treated in a patenting line, followed by acid pickling.

To streamline the traditional process Plasmait developed PlasmaFLASH machine that transforms the martenzitic crystal structure into austenitic crystal form. PlasmaFLASH machine is designed to work in-line with the shaving process and is used as an efficient alternative to patenting…

Heat Treat of Surface Martensite
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Plasma multiplies the speed for stainless steel and nickel alloy annealing
Summer 2006

Stainless steel and nickel alloy wires with diameters below 3mm have so far been annealed predominantly in tube/strand annealers. Due to its relatively small speed, the traditional process is normally conducted in a multi-line configuration to ensure sufficient output. In April  2006 Plasmait GmbH, Austria will introduce PlasmaANNEALER that was developed specifically for stainless steel and nickel alloys. The machine demonstrated annealing speeds of 10 to 20 times higher than traditional tube/strand annealers …

Plasma Multiplies the Speed for Stainless Steel and Nickely Alloy Annealing
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Graphite (De)Lubrication Made Easy – Thanks to Plasma.
Spring 2006

Graphite is used as a lubricant for hot drawing processes. Once applied, Graphite is hard to remove effectively from the wire surface. This is also the case with Molybdenum wire used for lighting applications, where complete removal of Graphite is critical to the quality of the end product. Up until now, Graphite could only be removed completely with an aggressive electro-polishing process that results in considerable waste of base material. The loss of Molybdenum can be very expensive, especially for small diameter wires. Plasmait developed the PlasmaGRAPH process to anneal and remove Graphite from Molybdenum wire.

Graphite (De)Lubrication Made Easy – Thanks to Plasma.
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New Plasma Technology for Extrusion, Enamelling, Plating and Galvanising Applications
Wire Industry / Autumn 2004

The main benefits of the new plasma technology are related to the quality of the finished wire and output. An additional aspect of the technology is also the ability to substitute chemical cleaning processes such as pickling and descaling. These are becoming increasing important to the wire manufacturer due to the mounting pressure imposed by the European and US environmental regulations ...

New Plasma Technology for Extrusion, Enamelling, Plating and Galvanising Applications
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New Plasma Technology Transforms the Economics of In-line Cleaning and Annealing
Wire Industry / Summer 2004

The benefits offered by the new plasma technology are not limited to the homogenous mechanical properties of the finished wire and ultra-clean wire surface. PlasmaANNEALER is set to shake the traditional views of in-line wire processing for a range of applications and materials. The technology offers a high-speed, efficient and environmentally friendly in-line process for the cleaning and annealing of wire ...

New Plasma Technology Transforms the Economics of In-line Cleaning and Annealing
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