Coatings World - August 2012

PPG Aerospace coatings specialists worked with livery artist Pascal Anson to supply Desothane HS/CA 8000 series topcoats in gold, light grey and white.

British Airways is the biggest user of PPG’s selectively strippable coatings system for Airbus aircraft, Reid said.

The topcoats for the gold mica were produced at the PPG Aerospace plant at Gonfreville, France, to British Airways’ specification, while the grey and white topcoats were mixed at Shildon.

The first airplane was unveiled live on British television in April.

In other news, several months ago PPG said it relocated and
expanded its Toulouse, France-area aerospace sales office. In ad-
dition to housing staff who serve regional PPG transparencies
and coatings customers, the larger facility includes a paint spray
booth, and a technical laboratory is being completed for trans-
parency engineering analysis starting later in 2012.

The Next Frontier: Protective
Coatings in Space

Reactive Surfaces, Austin, Texas, has been selected from over 70 aerospace companies as one of ten finalists for the 2012 New Space business plan competition by the Space Frontier Foundation, for its submission of a project concept company called ExoCoat, which is devoted to marketing the parent company’s bio-based functional additives and coatings to the aerospace and space communities.

Founded in 1988, the Space Frontier Foundation is an advocacy organization committed to an expanded permanent human presence in space. Through a series of prizes awarded to entrepreneurial organizations, such as its $100,000 first-place prize for the best business plan for a space-industry enterprise, the Space Frontier Foundation is helping to transform the notion of space being the exclusive domain of governments to that of a widely accessible market ripe with opportunity for entrepreneurial companies.

“We have long had an interest in expand-
ing our technology into materials used in con-
struction and maintenance of aerospace
surfaces," said Reactive Surfaces’ CIO Steve
McDaniel."We are honored that ExoCoat has
been selected as a finalist in the New-
Space2012 business plan competition.”
Functional coatings add significant dy-
namic capability to aerospace surfaces, and
they do so without any weight penalty or
changes to the specifications of existing coat-
ings into which they are placed. In many
cases, such as bio-based biocides that help to
keep aerospace cabin surfaces free of mi-
crobes, functional coatings reduce the
amount and weight of equipment and other
materials designed to keep such closed loop
systems microbe-free.

Dragon capsule for its first flight to the International Space Station (ISS). Alion applied a conductive thermal control coating to the Dragon Trunk, the cargo portion of the Dragon spacecraft. Since shipping aerospace hardware to a stationary coatings facility can often be difficult, costly and time-consuming, Alion engineers developed a portable coatings application system that can be easily transported. Using this new system, Alion's experts sprayed protective coatings onsite at SpaceX facilities.

"We are excited to support such an important test mission that could radically impact the way cargo is delivered to the International Space Station," said Chris Amos, Alion Senior vice president and manager of the Technology Solutions Group."Alion chemists pioneered the development of unique materials to protect aerospace components, and now our portable application system is a cost- and time-saving alternative to shipping components to our coatings lab. It's a game-changing solution that can help make the entire launch preparation process more efficient."

Alion has been developing and applying aerospace coatings on government and commercial satellites and spacecraft since the early days of the U.S.-Russia space race the company said.