Capability Information for Rare Earth Coatings, Inc.

Rare Earth Coatings, Inc. uses a vacuum metallizing process, also known as physical vapor deposition (PVD), vacuum plating, or thin film deposition. This process deposits a very thin metallic or non-metallic coating onto substrates such as plastic, glass, metal, and graphite composites. With our current processes we can deposit aluminum, copper, gold, stainless steel, chrome, silver, magnesium fluoride, silicon oxide, and titanium. Although we are not limited to these materials, they are the most commonly used. We have the experience and capabilities to develop new processes to meet our customers’ specifications.

The thickness of our coatings can range from 100 to 50,000+ angstroms depending upon your specifications. Our coatings are so thin that they will not change the dimensions of the component. Other vacuum coaters typically experience problems with adhesion of metallic coatings to certain substrates, REC works extremely hard to eliminate these problems by using specialized preparation processes. We have developed a proprietary process to achieve adherence of thin film coatings to graphite composites and other specialized substrates.

When necessary, we will provide a topcoat over our coating to protect it from corrosion and other harmful environments. Several of these topcoats meet military specifications and will pass salt spray, thermal cycle, and corrosion tests. REC also provides inexpensive in-house masking that will protect components from being coated in areas that need to remain free of any coating. We take pride in our quick turn around time for production parts and have the capabilities to provide both high and low volume production runs, as well as the ability to accommodate low volume prototype runs. We often do smaller specialty runs for government contractors looking for coatings that require special attention to detail that provides them with a superior quality coating. Rare Earth Coatings offers FREE sample coatings to potential customers wishing to see our coating capabilities. If you have samples that you would like coated please call us at 320-693-2868 or fill out our sample request.