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The first F-35 Lightning fighter jets have landed on the deck of the United Kingdom’s new aircraft carrier, making history and marking the beginning of more than half-a-century of ‘Carrier Strike’ operations. Royal Navy Commander Nathan Gray and RAF Squadron Leader Andy Edgell were the first pilots to land their stealth F-35 Lightning fighter jets on board the carrier, demonstrating the formidable force HMS Queen Elizabeth and her fleet of jets will be. 

Monitor Coatings Limited, the Castolin Eutectic subsidiary and surface engineering specialist in North Tyneside, was funded by UK’s Innovation Agency to investigate the elements within the Acoustic Emissions (AE) of the thermal spray process that contain information about the coating quality.

The objective of the study was to develop next generation on-line monitoring that can  detect deviations from the optimum spraying conditions at an early stage, enabling prompt correction and greatly reducing product rejections and re-coating compared to the inadequate post-spray quality check.

Funding has been granted by UK’s Innovation Agency to engineer novel wear resistant coatings applied via high kinetic energy spray processes

Monitor Coatings, part of Castolin Eutectic since 2013, were featured in the BBC’s The One Show on 26 January 2017. The short film covered the construction of Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carrier and showcased our truly innovative, next generation coating system. The 3 billion-pound ship is the largest aircraft carrier the UK ever had and will be the heart of the Royal Navy's operations for decades to come.

Visiting Monitor Coatings' headquarters in the North Shields, BBC's Marty Jopson has done a simulation on the behavior of a conventional paint system in contact with a jet engine at 600 C. The damage to the paint is obvious after one single firing.