PVD-hard coatings are very well known for their high hardness and wear resistance. Typically such coatings are deposited onto cutting and forming tools as well as wear parts with thicknesses in the range of 0.5 – 6 µm.

To control the internal stresses such coatings are mainly nano-structured multilayers to avoid delamination, which easily occurs in thicker monolayer coatings.

As per requirement of a customer PVT got the task to develop an industrial coating process, by which 20 µm thick TiN as a monolayer could be deposited. Within 6 months of development a PVT S2 hard coating system was manufactured, which fulfilled all customer requirements, particularly due to the PDA*-technology.

Extremely well adherent 20 µm thick TiN coatings are now deposited with an outstanding reproducibility of +/- 0.2 µm tolerance (+/-1% of total coating thickness). In addition the time for the deposition of the 20 µ thick coating could be reduced from 10.5 hours down to 3 hours by a newly designed customized rotary fixture.

*PDA = Plasma Diffused Arc