Misati clamps for tools and robot grips with a new chemical nickel surface treatment will be available from June. This treatment, which gives a golden colour to the fastening element, provides the steel pneumatic clamp with a higher hardness and resistance to rust, wear and corrosion Misati clamps are thus suitable for environments with humidity and corrosive agents, such as those found in the food industry.

Those who have used Misati pneumatic pincers or clamps know they are full of advantages: they reach a high holding force in minimum dimensions (from 1200 N in only Ø20mm up to 9500 N in Ø50 mm), they have a long working life (more than 7 years or 20 million cycles) and they have a wide range of standard gripper fingers that can easily fasten any type of workpiece.

By including the new nickel surface treatment in our catalogue, our clamps add several new advantages. Nickel gives clamps a higher hardness, a more uniform and low-porosity surface and a high resistance to oxidation and corrosive environments.

Clamps for the food industry

Misati pneumatic clamps are used on all kinds of tools and robot grips, so they end up working in the toughest and most demanding environments. Misati clamps are found in clean rooms, on arc welding tools, in hot stamping processes handling sheets at 1,000°C and in food environments, with solvents or an extremely high humidity.

The standard surface treatment of Misati clamps consists of bluing. Although this is usually enough for many production processes, environments such as the abovementioned require the fastening element to be protected against oxidation, welding sparks, high temperatures or chemical agents. 

For such applications, Misati has so far been using a Teflon-based surface treatment. While Teflon coating is optimal for welding environments or high temperatures, an even more resistant alternative was needed for environments with humidity or corrosive agents. The solution was a nickel coating.

Advantages of chemical nickel treatment 

The new surface finishing is based on chemical nickel. Misati has collaborated with the market-leading supplier, which already supplies nickel-plated steel parts to the aeronautical sector, among others. By means of a chemical process, nickel adheres to the clamp, thus providing a protective outer layer. But not only that: nickel penetrates several microns into the steel, making the bond between both materials much deeper and more insoluble than the traditional surface coating.

Unlike Teflon coating, the nickel treatment barely adds any material to the clamp. This guarantees a high dimensional stability on all parts. Misati not only protects the exterior of the pneumatic clamp with nickel, but also the mountings included in its standardised gripper finger programme and the internal components of the clamp, with minimum tolerances.

Nickel surface finishing has a higher hardness than steel itself. Moreover, it is low porous and has an excellent uniformity, higher than blued steel one. For example, a clamp with a nickel surface treatment is capable of withstanding more than 100 hours of salt-spray mist.

All these properties make Misati nickel-treated clamps the ideal solution both for environments with high humidity and rapid oxidation, containing corrosive agents, and for industries requiring high hygiene standards, such as the pharmaceutical or food industries.