PlatingFunctional Hard Chrome

Roll Services

Roll Services

Pioneer focuses on finishing all new rolls as well as refurbishing rolls to defined specifications. We offer a complete roll refurbishment service:  stripping, pre and post plate grind, weld up shell or base metal defects, chrome and grind journals.  We offer a large array of chrome finish types and provide Internal Roll Cleaning with before and after flow testing. We currently process shingle rolls, corrugated cardboard rolls, chill rolls, embossing rolls, engraving rolls, calendar rolls, paper and steel rolls to name a few.

Standard Specifications
QQ-C-320
MIL-C-20218
OEM Custom Specifications
RoHS, REACH, ELV & WEEE Compliant

Roll Service Capabilities
Commercial Mirror Finish: 0-1ra
Engineered Coarse Matte Finish up to 350 Ra
Chrome .001-.002 thk-.001 tir/taper
Soft matte finishes up to 100 Ra chrome .005 thick minimum .0005 tir/taper
Specialized pocketed finishes
Rolls up to 36” diameter, 19’ long and 10,000 lbs
Parabolic and Taper Crowned Rolls

Pioneer’s Roll Services Advantages
Best in class lubricity and durability
Development of custom roll finishes
Centralized Roll Services – new and refurbishment
24/7 Roll repair services
Journal repair services
Internal roll cleaning and flow testing

Production Capabilities
Our roll finishing capacity can handle rolls as large as 36″ in diameter and 24′ in length up to 10,000 lbs, with the ability to crown rolls up to 24″ in diameter and 12′ long.

Cylindrical grinders and capacities

• Landis-12″x48″
• Landis-14″x72″
• Landis-20″x96″
• Norton-24″x 192″
• Norton-30″x 144″
• Cincinnati-16″x144″
• Cincinnati-24″x162″
• Cincinnati-36″x288″

Lathes

• Poreba-42″x19′
• Poreba-53″x23′
• American Pacemaker-32″x20′
• Leblond-32″x16′
• Leblond-36″x16′
• Standard Process-25″x16′

Roll Finishes

From a Coarse Matte to an Flawless/Optical Mirror-we can provide any finish you require. We have several large finishing lathes in-house that are equipped with a variety of different finishing heads. Our dedicated finishing machines allow us to produce any type of controlled matte finish, commercial mirror, optical mirror and mirror pocket finishes. We are experts in roll finishing, and we’ll help you develop the optimum finish for every application.

Internal Roll Cleaning (IRC)

Issues with roll overheating or coolant flow? Our internal roll cleaning will help improve the heat removal properties of your chill rolls. We perform flow checks before and after cleaning and provide flow reports for you to help identify potential runnability issues. Our IRC process will remove scale and rust build up on the internals of the roll allowing them to run cleaner and improve their heat transfer performance.

Tolerance and Inspection Reports

All parts are finished to the tightest possible tolerances. Inspection reports are provided with every part processed which includes surface finish graphs, chrome thickness readings, Pro-Mic roll profile graphs, TIR/Taper reports and all the finished dimensions.

Roll Performance Consulting

We have the expertise and knowledge to help resolve roll related runnability, e.g., issues with release, product flow, drag, cooling issues and poor sheet pattern. Many of these problems are caused by finish design and wear issues, cooling, heating or plating issues on your rolls. With over 30 years of experience in finish design and application, we have the knowledge to help improve runnability, increase productivity, decrease downtime and simply make your rolls perform at optimal levels.

Large Diameter Cylinder Liner Services

Pioneer provides Engineered Micro-surface Solutions, with functional chrome, focused on the performance of large diameter Diesel Cylinder Liners.

Bearing Surface Plateau Finishes

Functional Chrome combined with Plateau Honing provides an optimized cylinder liner surface finish for large bore diesel engines.  Pioneer offers design services to develop the ideal solution for each application.

Honing: We have several large hones in our cylinder liner department. We do both new and complete reworks of large diesel cylinder liners. We have the capacity to hone liners up to 4 feet in length and 10″ in diameter and provide you with any type of finish you require.

ChroLube™ – Best in Class Durable Dry Lubricity

ChroLube™ – Best in Class Durable Dry Lubricity

Pioneer’s ChroLube™ technology with a focus on Engineered Surface Micro-Finishes (ESM™) for critical wear and release surfaces.  ChroLube combines the highest performing Functional Hard Chrome with near zero coefficient of friction (COF) surface finish engineering to optimize the performance of critical components.  ChroLube is ideally suited to applications requiring durable dry lubricity or optimal material release, e.g., mold tooling.

Standard Specifications
QQ-C-320
MIL-C-20218
OEM Custom Specifications
RoHS, REACH, ELV & WEEE Compliant

Value Added Services
Grinding, honing and polishing
Large size component capabilities up to 48” diameter, 19 feet and 10,000 pounds

Performance Benefits
Engineered Surface Finishes
65-70 Rockwell
Very low coefficient of friction
Corrosion resistant
Best in class combination of wear performance and low friction surface

ChroMax™ – Critical Tribological Performance for Harsh Environment Applications

ChroMax™ – Critical Tribological Performance for Harsh Environment Applications

Pioneer’s ChroMax™ Functional Hard Chrome for mission critical applications.  ChroMax combines the highest performing Functional Hard Chrome with surface finish engineering to optimize the performance of critical components.  ChroMax will benefit applications requiring low coefficient of friction performance in use environments that demand consistent results in harsh environments.

Standard Specifications
QQ-C-320
MIL-C-20218
OEM Custom Specifications
Engineered Surface MicroFinish (ESM™)
RoHS, REACH, ELV & WEEE Compliant

Value Added Services
Grinding, honing and polishing
Large size component capabilities up to 48” diameter, 19 feet and 10,000 pounds

Performance Benefits
Engineered Surface Finishes
65-70 Rockwell
Very low coefficient of friction
Corrosion resistant
Best in class combination of wear performance and low friction surface

Benefits of Functional Hard Chrome

Benefits of Functional Hard Chrome

The extreme surface hardness (70+ Rockwell C) of functional chrome yields leading wear performance versus comparable products.  Like nickel, chromium has a natural lubricity which can be enhanced with mechanical surface treatment, such as honing and polishing.  ChroLube™ functional hard chrome, as an example, can be engineered to a Coefficient of Friction of nearly zero.  In short, the hardness, lubricity, and subsequent release properties position hard chrome as the standard in wear centric, tribological applications.

Why Utilize Pioneer’s Engineered Surface MicroFinish Chrome solutions?

• Comparable tribological performance to PVD/DLC but with significantly less complex manufacturing processes and broader applications, e.g., no line of site coating requirements.
• Leading class material release performance combined with optimal wear properties.
• Ease of maintenance or replacement – refurbishment of functional hard chrome produces excellent results and is economically viable.
• Interfacing substrate hardness. Chrome naturally anti-galling.
• Excellent harsh environment, e.g., soil, caustic chemicals and abrasives, surface solution.
• High cycle count surface transfer performance, e.g., rolls, molds.

Ideal Applications

• Organic and metallic molding dyes (plastic, rubber, cast metal)
• Capital machinery
• Converting rolls
• Material transfer systems
• Product handling – logistics systems
• Extreme load bearing / harsh environment
• Shafts / Spindles
• Axles / Bearings
• Mission Critical Surfaces / When Failure is Not an Option!
• Firearm bolts, pins, barrels

Aerospace landing gear, actuators, valve sleeves

Value Added Services

Value Added Services

Pioneer provides a complete Functional Hard Chrome solution with the ability incorporate all critical chrome related process required for an optimal surface solution.

Degreasing: We have a fully automated degreasing unit for pre-cleaning all the product we process through the plant.

Stripping: We can strip previously hard chrome plated parts in our numerous strip tanks. We strip and re-plate any shape and size part and do complete reworks on parts such as hydraulic cylinders, pulp and paper baskets, food processing equipment, front and rear suspension systems for mining trucks and many more.

Baking: We have 2 large walk-in ovens and several small ovens that we use for both pre and post plate baking as required for stress relief or hydrogen removal.

Grit Blasting: We can grit blast a wide range and variety of parts in our multiple blast cabinets and grit blasting lathes.

Honing: We have several large hones in our cylinder liner department. We do both new and complete reworks of large diesel cylinder liners. We have the capacity to hone liners up to 4 feet in length and 10″ in diameter and provide you with any type of finish you require.

Polishing: We have many pieces of polishing equipment for pre and post plate polishing operations. We have large centerless roll polishers with traveling heads, several Rand Bright automatic units for the smaller/high volume parts, free sanding buffing heads and numerous handheld polishing units to accommodate any type of polishing for any part.

Grinding: We are a complete grind shop with 8 cylindrical grinders in-house. Go to the Roll Service section of this site for details.

Quality Control

Quality Control

Industrial hard chrome plating is not always a simple process. A large amount of electrical current needs to be applied to the part for the plating process to occur. Directing that current and chrome to the right places and in the correct amounts takes talent, experience and a lot of know-how. That is the heart and soul of our operations. Our proprietary tooling designs, our quality control of the plating baths and our dedicated employees provide a level of consistency and uniform coating that is unsurpassed.

Inspection equipment: We use all modern, state of the art, gauging equipment throughout the plant. We have numerous profilometers capable of printing the profiles of surface finishes, Pro-Mics that provide graphs and profiles of finish ground rolls, air gauging for cylinders, snap gauges and masters in all sizes, numerous micrometers in all sizes, bore micrometers, several different scopes and much more.

Plating Bath Chemistry: We analyze our bath chemistry daily to ensure that cleanliness and chemical balance is exactly where it need to be. In hard chrome plating it is essential to keep your baths clean and free of impurities such as copper, iron, and trivalent chromium. If the chemistry is high with any of these impurities the quality of plating is drastically affected and problems such as pitting, and porosity start to occur, and the hardness of the chrome is diminished. We are regularly cleaning our own baths in-house with our Eco Tech cleaning system, so we always have complete control of our chemistry. We are one of the few hard chrome companies that treats and cleans their own baths and it is imperative we do this in order to maintain the high level of plating quality for our customers.

Environmental Controls

Environmental Controls

Strict control of potential environmental contaminants is key to Pioneer’s offering as the premier Functional Hard Chrome provider.

We are proud of our air and water handling equipment to keep up with our 24 hours a day, 7 days a week work schedule. We have six large scrubbers for our 30 plating tanks that exhaust 120,000 cubic feet per minute of clean air. All scrubbers are equipped with HEPA filters giving us exhaust emission that are 10 times below the regulatory limit. The wastewater treatment system uses a super-efficient batch capacity that ensures chemical level testing and quality assurance. Every drop of water in our plant travels to our 5000-gallon water treatment tanks where every batch is treated and tested before being released to our filter press.

As necessary as it is to meet the EPA guidelines for both water and air emissions, what matters most is the quality of life for our employees and our community. Pioneer is committed to preserving and maintaining the high quality of the environment and we go above and beyond what is required for both air and water testing.