By Liz Nickels
The company applied a tungsten carbide-based coating, which is nano-structured and applied by chemical vapour deposition (CVD), to an important part of the Predator’s thruster system.
Hardide says that the vehicle, manufactured by Scottish marine electronic equipment specialist Seatronics, has increased in performance and power, with critical wear issues also vastly improved.
“The Observation-class ROV sector is a growing market for us and we want to make the Predator as maintenance-free as possible,” said David Currie, managing director at Seatronics. “The Hardide coating solved the wear issues we were facing and increased the performance of the ROV. Using the Hardide coating on the Predator was like tuning a car to get more miles per gallon and getting F1 performance.”
This is the first time Hardide coatings have been used in the ROV industry.
