Claims
- 1. A metal flake powder consisting essentially of solid opaque flakes of metal each flake having a thickness of less than one micron; said flakes having essentially smooth, defect free, mechanically formed faces with major dimensions of about 10 to 40 microns; said powder being capable of being formed as a water floated layer and exhibiting, when formed as a water floated layer of minus 325 mesh particles a high specular reflectance of at least 30 percent as measured by aiming a beam of parallel light rays generated by a tungsten filament light source at an angle of 30.degree. from the vertical and detecting the specularly reflected light, as affected by the absorption characteristics of the material tested, by a photo cell sensitive in the range of 300 to 700 millimicrons wavelength; and said metal flakes being coated with a thin lubricant film adapted to provide leafing characteristics to said flakes when said lubricant film is not wetted by a coating composition vehicle and to provide non-leafing characteristics to said flakes when said lubricant film is wetted by a coating composition vehicle.
- 2. A metal flake powder in accordance with claim 1 wherein the average flake thickness is in the range of 0.27 to 0.94 micron.
- 3. A metal flake powder as in claim 1 wherein each flake is characterized by generally rounded smooth edges.
- 4. A metal flake powder in accordance with claim 1 having a composition containing, by weight, up to about 90% copper, up to about 10% maganese, up to about 3% molybdenum, up to about 70% zinc, up to about 70% tin, up to about 10% silver, and the balance essentially a metal from the group consisting of nickel, iron, cobalt, chromium and the platinum-group metals.
- 5. A metal flake powder in accordance with claim 1 made of a metal from the group consisting of nickel; cobalt; alloys of nickel, iron and cobalt with each other and with, optionally, chromium; stainless steels; nickel-copper alloys; nickel-chromium alloys; nickel-chromium-iron alloys and nickel-silver alloys.
- 6. A metal flake powder in accordance with claim 1 having a thickness of less than 1 micron and made of carbonyl nickel.
- 7. A metal flake powder in accordance with claim 1 having a thickness of less than 1 micron and made of a stainless steel.
- 8. A metal flake powder in accordance with claim 1 wherein said metal has a melting point of at least 1100.degree.C.
- 9. A metal flake powder in accordance with claim 1 wherein said metal has a density of at least 7.5.
Parent Case Info
This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 293,446 filed Sept. 29, 1972, and now abandoned, which in turn is a divisional of application Ser. No. 94,333 filed Dec. 2, 1970 which is now U.S. Pat. No. 3,709,439, granted Jan. 9, 1973.
US Referenced Citations (4)
Divisions (1)
|
Number |
Date |
Country |
Parent |
94333 |
Dec 1970 |
|
Continuations (1)
|
Number |
Date |
Country |
Parent |
293446 |
Sep 1972 |
|