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GettinG HealtHy Coating for a Variety of Industries Established in 1984, AIC specializes in several manufacturing sectors, including medical, IT, automotive, energy, aerospace and food processing. The company's 50,000-sq-ft plant contains a conveyorized powder coating line capable of handling massive amounts of coatings, and the aforementioned environmental and climate-controlled area for scientific applications. AIC is an Axalta Powder Coatings' Certified Star Coater and a Whitford Because Rislan is able Worldwide to endure high service Approved Quality Coater, and it is temperatures, it can be these titles and autoclaved in medical certifications that applications and has get the company in the front excellent chemical, impact, door of many corrosion and abrasion Fortune 500 resistance. manufacturers. Steve Hockett, vice president of production, says his company applies a variety of coatings for its growing list of medical and technology clients, including Phillips, Lam Research, Applied Materials, Sanmina and FMC Technologies. "A significant amount of our volume and overall revenue comes from the medical industry," Hockett says. Meeting High Service Temps Chief among the medical coatings is Arkema's Rislan nylon, which AIC applies to medical forceps, defibrillator paddles, appliance racks, robotic parts, semiconductor parts and others. Because Rislan is able to endure high service temperatures, Hockett says it can be autoclaved in medical applications and has excellent chemical-, impact-, corrosion- and abrasion-resistance. A large majority of AIC's processes involve Rislan and the Whitford Corp.'s Xylan fluoropolymer coatings, which are dry film lubricants that can be applied to most metals, plastics and ceramics castings because of their low-friction and nonstick properties. "Those two are primarily used as insulation coatings because there is often an electrical current going through the parts, usually in medical devices," Hockett says. "Of course, they're also great coatings for when the parts are reused and need to be sterilized." AIC has its own autoclave to test certain parts to make sure they are holding up to the high temperatures during sterilization, often running the batch of parts through as much as 25 autoclave cycles during testing. "We just want to make sure that what we are providing will hold up out in the field," Hockett says. "We've been doing this testing for 20 years, and we've never Medical parts are masked before heading into the powder spray booth. AIC applies coatings to medical forceps, defibrillator paddles, appliance racks, robotic parts, semiconductor parts and others. PRODUCTS FINISHING — pfonline.com 19