Coating the Town with Epoxy

Pratt and Whitney designs some of the best aircraft engines in the world, there’s simply no question about it. The East Hartford, CT-based company’s turbines have logged well over 1 billion hours of flight time in civilian airliners, and are currently used in the US Air Force’s two newest jet fighters, the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. One of the so-called “Big Three” aircraft engine makers (the others being Rolls-Royce and General Electric), it’s built tens of thousands of engines in its day, including rocket propulsion systems for NASA. Needless to say, all of this nonstop, innovative production can take its toll on any facility’s internal maintenance, and P and W proved no exception.

But that was before Pumpcoat stepped in. Once they contacted us, we came down to Hartford, surveyed the damage, and set up a process that would only cost Pratt and Whitney $9,000 with a mere two days’ repair and coating. We cleaned the leaky parts and laid multiple coatings down, the first being a coat of epoxy. Epoxy is a well-known polymer prized for its adhesiveness, its corrosion-resistance, and its heat-resistance. With that new layer of epoxy guarding against further leakage, we were able to solve Pratt and Whitney’s problem (not to mention that we also saved them a bundle of money).

The Aircraft Industry is one of the few which continues on a record pace as world air travel increases.  Production is on the upswing and machine downtime is critical. Many of the tool machines in their Connecticut manufacturing facility, which employs about 3000 people, have corrosion issues. These range from leaking Coolant pans to rusted plenums on Downdraft Booths and Cyclones. These machines were being scheduled for replacement parts and downtime was a concern.  Our rebuilding process – plus curing time – got them up and running within 1-2 days.

It turns out that even a company making state-of-the-art turbine fan engines for stealth fighters can have its humble corrosion problems. We’re proud of the problem-solving and cost-cutting work we did on behalf of Pratt and Whitney, and we’d be proud to do it again for whoever needs it. We’re called the Problem Solvers.