Teflon Coating Specification

[RFreund]

Does anyone know where I might find a Teflon coating spec. I'd like to adhere it to structural steel.
FWIW - I'm trying to reduce friction in a horizontal pipe support application.

EIT

http://www.HowToEngineer.com

 

[dhengr]

Rfreund:
I think you are probably going about this the wrong way. You don’t coat the steel with Teflon, like a frying pan. You can buy Teflon impregnated into fiberglass sheet material. As I recall Fiberglid was one brand name. It was about 1/16th to 3/32" thick, various sizes in plan, and we bonded (epoxy) it to a bearing plate, which was then bolted or welded to the structure. There are also some plastic low friction bearing materials today. We machined a shallow pocket in the bearing pl., about half the thickness of the fiberglass to assist in holding it in place w.r.t. lateral (shearing) loads. Then we epoxied it into this shallow pocket.

 

[RFreund]

Thanks for the response DH. What you're describing is what I'm going for. I'm just trying to figure out how to best convey that to the contractor.


EIT

http://www.HowToEngineer.com

 

[dhengr]

Rfreund:
I would Google Fiberglid and take a look at their lit. and catalogs. Call their engineering dept. I’d call out the product (or equal) on my drawings. I would do some details of the support/bearing saddles and exactly what I wanted, including saddle radius tolerance, depth of pocket, etc. etc. Radius, becuase much difference btwn saddle and pipe leads to a line load, not some bearing area on the pipe/bearing matr’l. Pocket machining can be kinda rough since you want some mech. bond with the fiberglid, the epoxy and the metal. Some study of and cautionary notes, maybe sample testing for approval, on the epoxy and bonding methods because they can really screw this up if they aren’t careful. Ask some of your ME friends, some of these types of things are stock items for them, which you just bolt to the top or bottom of your beams.