BENSALEM, Pa.--Metal Improvement Company (MIC), a business unit of Curtiss-Wright Surface Technologies, has expanded its metal finishing operations at its Bensalem, Pa., facility with the addition of a boric/sulfuric acid anodizing (BSAA) line.  Boric/sulfuric acid anodizing is approved by many aerospace OEMs as an environmentally friendly alternative to chromic acid anodizing (CAA).

The MIC Bensalem facility, located in northeast suburban Philadelphia, has over 200,000 square feet of processing space, and services the aerospace and other specialty industries. The facility utilizes automated chemical processing tanks that are 40 feet long, twelve feet deep, and 4 feet wide. These tanks enable the BSAA of large single components, measuring up to 38 feet long by 10 feet high by 2 feet wide, or large batches of smaller parts, the company says.

Besides BSAA, the Bensalem facility performs a range of other metal finishing services, including grit blasting, fluorescent penetrant inspection (FPI), chromic/phosphoric acid anodizing, Alodine^®, glass beading, and shot peening.  The facility's coating capabilities are said to include a wide range of fluoropolymer coatings, such as PTFE, FEP, PFA, ETFE, PVDF, Xylan^®, Halar^®, and Kynar^® 500.

The MIC Bensalem facility holds multiple approvals from aerospace OEMs, including Boeing, Sikorsky, Lockheed-Martin, Bombardier, Cessna, De Havilland, and Raytheon. The National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program (NADCAP) has accredited the facility's quality system and its FPI capability.

For more information on MIC Bensalem's BSAA and other coating capabilities, see: www.philadelphia-coatings.metalimprovement.com/.