Fabricating for Dummies by Hanson Kip;

Author:Hanson, Kip;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2018-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

Donning a Smooth, Slippery Coat

Everyone needs a little help now and then. And even though tool steel and its much-harder counterpart carbide are tougher than a mid-year tax audit, they benefit substantially from the application of TiN (titanium nitride), TiCN (titanium carbonitride), TiAlN (titanium aluminum nitride), and other whisper-thin coatings, many of them dreamed up by mad scientists working late at night in secrecy.

Not really, but the value of tool coatings continues to expand as more and more toolmakers purchase their own coating equipment and push the boundaries of what’s possible. How thick are they? Pluck one of the hairs from your sadly receding hairline and slice it lengthwise into 100 or so pieces. That might seem pretty thin, but it’s enough to drastically increase tool life in virtually any punch, die, blade, form, or cutting tool.

Two basic kinds of coatings exist: those made through chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and those that use physical vapor deposition (PVD). CVD is the old guy in the coating club. It’s slightly thicker (up to 0.0004 inch), and because it uses relatively high temperatures (around 1,900 °F), slight dimensional changes to tooling may occur during the coating process. It’s also hot enough to affect the mechanical properties of some tool steels, so caution should be used before applying.

CVD’s newer counterpart, PVD, leaves an edge that’s a bit sharper and, in most cases, a coating that is more lubricious. It’s ideally suited to punches and other “cutting” tools. In an effort to provide tools with superpowers, most tooling manufacturers apply “multiphase” coatings, which bring together the best attributes of several different layers. Long story short, if your shop isn’t using coated tools, you’re missing the higher profits and better production boat.

As mentioned a couple of paragraphs earlier, chemists and material scientists thrive on new ways to coat stuff. It’s important to keep abreast of what they’re doing. For example, some tooling manufacturers are using diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings to make tools super slippery. And dry lubricants can be applied atop existing coatings, providing a very low coefficient of friction (a more scientific way of saying slippery) and increasing durability. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the next miracle coating — it might just save your bacon.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.