About Thermal Spray Technologies, Inc.

The idea for Thermal Spray Technologies, Inc. came through a graduate research program in the late 1980’s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, formally the Metallurgical Engineering Department. Professor Frank Worzala approached Richard L. Wilkey, the owner of Fisher Barton, Inc. about an idea to use coatings to make lawn mower blades last longer with the use of wear resistant coatings. Fisher Barton is located in Watertown, Wisconsin that manufacturer’s lawnmower blades. A graduate research program was founded around the idea with funding from the Wisconsin Department of Development and Fisher Barton, Inc.

Mr. William Lenling was one of two graduate students who worked on the program with Professor Worzala. The research studied different coating technologies including the technology of thermal spraying. After the research was complete, Mr. Lenling was hired by Fisher Barton to continue working on the idea of using coatings to make lawnmower blades, and other agricultural blades, last longer.

Soon after being hired by Fisher Barton, a research proposal on the same subject was submitted to the US Department of Energy and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The research received funding and Mr. Lenling moved to New Mexico and spent fifteen months working with Sandia’s scientists under the guidance of Dr. Mark F. Smith studying thermal spraying. Several different ideas for coatings were worked on during this research. Some of the ideas for coatings were for Sandia’s internal applications and many were ideas for Fisher Barton’s customers. The key to this work was the transfer of technology from Sandia scientists to Fisher Barton; the transfer was a strong scientific approach on how to develop application-specific coating solutions using the technologies of thermal spray.

After the technology transfer research was completed with Sandia, Mr. Lenling returned to Fisher Barton and began commercializing some of the coating ideas he had been working on. In 1992 enough of the ideas had been commercialized that it made sense to separately incorporate Thermal Spray Technologies, Inc., (TST). Two years following the incorporation of TST, the company moved from sister company Fisher Barton’s facility to its newly built home in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Four years later TST expanded its facility to over three times its original size.

Today, TST employs approximately 80 high-tech employees. Their innovation has developed coating solutions for many diverse applications for some of the worlds leading OEM manufacturers. These OEM manufacturers represent a very broad variety of industries.

From the initial incorporation TST’s mission has been: “Dedication to fully satisfying the needs of its customers by engineering, improving and continuously providing high quality application-specific coatings and coated components.”