Thermal Spray, Hardfacing & Wear Coatings calculator
Overspray Loss Calculator
This calculator measures the reject rate on a thermal spray batch, the share of coated parts that fail inspection for defects like poor adhesion, spallation, out-of-spec thickness, or excessive overspray on masked features. Quality engineers and shop supervisors use it to track coating yield, spot process drift, and decide whether a run needs corrective action before the next batch. In a business where a rejected carbide-coated part carries the full cost of powder, gas, labor, and a grinding allowance, even a few points of reject rate erodes margin fast. The tool returns the measured rate and the gap to your first-pass yield target so you know at a glance whether the batch met standard.
What this calculator does
- This calculator measures the reject rate on a thermal spray batch, the share of coated parts that fail inspection for defects like poor adhesion, spallation, out-of-spec thickness, or excessive overspray on masked features.
- Use it when overspray loss in thermal spray, hardfacing and wear coatings needs a clean rate and gap-to-target you can put on a tier board.
- It computes the fraction of coated parts that were rejected or reworked in a batch and compares that yield against your target.
Formula used
- Overspray Loss rate = affected amount ÷ total amount
- Gap to target = target rate - calculated rate
Inputs explained
- Rejected or reworked coated parts:
- Total parts coated in the batch:
- Target first-pass yield:
How to use the result
- Use it at batch close-out or during a process capability review to trend coating quality and flag runs that miss the yield target.
- It counts parts, not defect severity or root cause; a batch dominated by one bad fixture reads the same as one with scattered failures, so pair it with defect Pareto data.
Current U.S. benchmarks
- Industrial electricity averages 8.66 cents per kWh across the U.S. (EIA, Apr 2026), up 5.5% from a year earlier. Energy-intensive steps carry this directly into unit cost.
- The producer price index for industrial chemicals stands at 344.336 (BLS, May 2026), up 16.1% from a year earlier. Quotes priced off last quarter's material cost miss this move.
- The U.S. has 14,543 chemical manufacturing establishments employing about 911,245 workers (Census County Business Patterns, 2023).
Common questions
- How do you calculate coating reject rate? Divide the number of rejected or reworked parts by the total parts coated. With 8 rejects out of 250 parts, that is 8/250 = 3.2%.
- What is a good first-pass yield for thermal spray? Mature production coating lines often run first-pass yields of 95% or better, meaning a reject rate at or below 5%. The 3.2% in the example clears a 95% target comfortably.
- How does the gap to target work here? The calculator subtracts the measured rate from your reference target. With a 95 target and a 3.2% measured rate the reported gap is 91.8 points, a large positive gap that signals the batch beat the threshold; a small or negative gap flags a batch that needs attention.
- What causes high thermal spray reject rates? Common drivers are poor surface prep (contaminated or under-blasted substrate), wrong standoff or spray angle, thermal shock and spallation, thickness out of tolerance, and overspray bleeding onto masked critical features.
- Should I count reworkable parts as rejects? Include them if you are measuring first-pass yield, since a part that needs a strip-and-recoat consumed capacity and material. Track scrap-only separately if you also need a true scrap rate for costing.
Last reviewed 2026-05-12.