Inspection & Consultancy Services Ltd have been involved with painting works and maintenance of mechanical items, components of importance, or critical items in major production or processing plants.
Whilst some of the work is to inspect and carry out condition assessments of existing mechanical items and plant for clients, some of the inspections are where new items have been purchased for sites and plants.
Machinery and significant items of plant, whether manufactured, bought or sold overseas or within New Zealand, often have coating defects or coating systems that do not comply with the coating specification for the item, or are not fit for purpose (whether due to damage or degradation from transportation or installation or due to inferior coating type or application).
For significant or critical items, Inspection & Consultancy Services Ltd can carry out an assessment of the coating(s), and if required by the client, may also provide an appraisal of the coating system and the condition of the coating system for the environment the item will be subjected to when fitted and in service.
New Zealand has some unique environments and exposure to damaging UV and airborne salts, and also has some intensive processing operations that demands a lot from the protective coating system – therefore without the coating system being fit for purpose, premature coating failures will either significantly reduce the length of service period, or likewise increase the frequency of maintenance and time the plant is out of service for repairs.
The most common inspection for Inspection & Consultancy Services Ltd is when the item has already been painted, and generally ready for service.
In this type of inspection the main focus is on the visual aspect and DFT.
The visual inspection will always focus extensively on checking the areas that are hard-to-access area (such as behind plates, cleats, corners, etc), as well as focussing on the edges and areas of the surfaces that can be “shadowed” during the painting process.
The visual inspection also focuses on the visual appearance of the coating, with particular focus on application error, application defects (such as runs, inclusions, unsatisfactory surface preparation, opacity, incomplete coating, etc), and coating attributes that will affect the longevity and performance of the coating system (such as delamination, peeling or flaky coating, inclusions or contaminated substrate, mechanical damage, repairs to damaged areas, etc).
Inspection & Consultancy Services Ltd are also involved in the QA process for the initial or maintenance/refurbishment projects of this type of plant, where we can carry out coating selection or appraisal of coating selections, in-progress QA inspections and review of contractor QA documentation are all done by qualified coating inspectors.
A sample of coating jobs on Mechanical Items that ICS has been involved with
