Si-Tec® / ceramic-composite wear technology
Put the hardest material where the wear is happening.
Si-Tec® casts ceramic reinforcement into selected zones of an abrasion-resistant steel or iron casting, so the hardest material sits on the wear face instead of throughout a part that does not need it.
Patented technology, engineered and poured in Spokane, Washington.
Material system
The material system is configured around the application, the part geometry, and the wear pattern the part actually shows. It is not a grade you order off a list — it is laid out for the specific surface that is disappearing.
Construction
One casting, two materials, one wear face.
A coating sits on top of a part and can be lost. Si-Tec® reinforcement is cast into the part, so it stays in the zone it was placed in for as long as there is material left to wear.
01
Primary wear face
The surface the material runs across. This is the face that decides how long the part stays in service, and it is the face the reinforcement is placed behind.
02
Ceramic reinforcement
Ceramic is cast into the zones carrying the abrasion. It resists sliding wear that polishes a monolithic alloy away, and it stays where it was placed rather than being applied as a coating that can be lost.
03
Metallic casting
An abrasion-resistant steel or iron casting carries the load, the mounting, and the geometry. The part remains a casting — reinforcement changes the wear face, not the way the part is built into the machine.
Reinforced zones are not weld repaired, and iron castings are not weld repaired at all — a Si-Tec® part is planned as replaceable
Application fit
It is the right answer for some parts and the wrong one for others.
Si-Tec® costs more than a plain alloy casting. On the parts it suits, the downtime it removes pays for that several times over. On the parts it does not, we will tell you to buy the cheaper casting.
Where Si-Tec® earns its cost
- Sliding abrasion is the dominant wear mode and a hard monolithic alloy is still polishing away
- The wear is concentrated in a predictable zone rather than spread evenly over the part
- Replacing the part costs more in downtime than it costs in metal
- A harder single alloy would solve the abrasion but crack under the impact the part also sees
Where it does not
- Wear is light and evenly distributed — a standard alloy casting is the cheaper answer
- The real failure is structural cracking, not wear. Geometry or grade comes first
- The part is consumed so fast that material cost, not service life, governs the decision
- The part is kept in service by weld repair — reinforced zones and iron castings are not repaired that way
Applications
Proven across heavy industry.
01
Chute and hopper liners
Transfer points where material slides across the surface continuously at low impact. Sliding abrasion is the whole problem here, which is the condition Si-Tec® is built for.
Sustained sliding abrasion, low impact
02
Crusher wear components
Gouging and impact together, where a part hard enough to resist the abrasion is usually too brittle to survive the blows. Reinforcing the wear zone keeps the rest of the casting tough.
Gouging abrasion with impact loading
03
Wear plate and wear blocks
Sacrificial surfaces on high-traffic zones, reinforced in the areas that go first so the whole plate is not replaced on account of one worn corner.
Sliding and gouging abrasion, replaceable zones
Reinforcement is placed per part — a Si-Tec® version of your casting starts from your geometry, not from a catalog number
Specification
The wear pattern is the specification.
A print shows the part when it was new. The wear pattern shows what the machine is actually doing to it, which is the information the zone map is built from.
Send the service data01
Wear survey
Start from the service data. Measurements, photographs of the wear pattern, and how long the part lasted show what the application is doing to it.
02
Zone map
The wear pattern defines where reinforcement goes and where it would be wasted. A zone that is not wearing does not get paid for.
03
Material system
Matrix alloy and reinforcement are configured to the application and the geometry, and the part is checked against the mounting and the machine it returns to.
04
Pattern and pour
The part is cast on the same floor as everything else we make, under the same heat number and the same records.
05
Field measurement
Send back wear measurements when the part comes out. That evidence drives the next revision of the zone map or the material, which is how a Si-Tec® part gets better over a second and third run.
Field evidence
Numbers, but only with the circuit attached.
Wear-life claims travel badly. A liner that lasts four times as long in one circuit does nothing of the kind in another, because the rock, the tonnage, and the geometry are different. So there is no multiplier on this page. There are nine measured trials on the success stories page, each one carrying the machine it ran in, the feed material, and the baseline it improved on — read those as evidence that the approach works, not as a number you can hold us to. What we will do is measure your part in your circuit and put the numbers against the ones you have now.
Read the nine field trialsWhat to send with the enquiry
- Service life of the part you are running now, in hours or tons
- Measurements and photographs of the part you are running now
- Photographs showing where the wear actually is
- Feed material, tonnage, and anything unusual about the duty
Manufacturing and records
Same floor, same heat number, same file.
Si-Tec® parts run through the same melt, mold, heat treat, and inspection sequence as every other casting here. Chemistry is read before tap, UT · RT · MT · PA testing is done in-house, and the results stay attached to the heat number for 20 years.
Tell us which surface is disappearing.
Bring the part, the service life you are getting now, and the duty it runs in. Engineering will say whether Si-Tec® is the right answer for it — including when it is not.
Technical review within 48 hours