These are thin film coatings – typically anywhere from 0.5 microns to 5 microns – that won’t throw an engineered part out of spec

PVDcoating meaning

If you have a need to change the surface properties of a part to achieve an enhanced material, please give us a call to discuss with our technical team.

PVD coatings result in extreme surface hardness, low coefficient of friction, anti-corrosion, and wear resistance properties.

There is a wide range of applications for PVD, which is why it is commonly used in high-tech industries.  Some of the industries and applications in which we have applied PVD coatings include coating on composites for aerospace, titanium on medical implants and surgical tools, gold thin film to replace plating for electronics, non-metal, chemical resistant oxides for semiconductor parts and hard ceramic coatings for industrial tools.

What isPVDcoating on stainless steel

Common PVD coating materials are titanium, zirconium, aluminum, stainless steel and copper, though gold for aerospace electronics is often requested.  And these coatings can be applied to a wide variety of substrates, including nylon, plastics, glass, ceramics and metals, such as stainless steel and aluminum.

We receive frequent requests for monolithic tooling balls of single piece construction. This approach may look good on paper but it doesn’t pan out in the real world. Of the many examples of this design that we have inspected we haven’t found one single part, that came close to meeting even commercial tolerances. I had one manufacturer of these parts tell me that it didn’t really matter, because his customers couldn’t even measure the tolerance anyway.

Pvd finish full formcar

To meet the almost daily calls, that we get, for custom made tooling and construction balls, we have set up a small department just to produce these items. If you use our parameters, our typical delivery from this new department is two weeks, instead of the previous four to eight weeks. Using our parameters, typically prices are one half to one quarter of the old price structure. We have some strong design suggestions, to keep the cost of tooling balls down and the delivery good. The first choice for the Ball Material, is type 440c, hard stainless steel. This hard stainless steel ball is threaded by electrical discharge machining (EDM). The alternative for the ball material is to use a tungsten carbide sphere that are also threaded by EDM The threaded ball is screwed and glued into a spherical cavity in the hardened tool steel stem or shank, to form the blank for the tooling ball. A typical design, that we receive, from customers will choose a type 440c stainless steel stem or shank, which would be a good design choice, if you were making a hundred pieces or more. To harden type 440c stainless steel requires a very high temperature of 1925 degrees Fahrenheit, in a vacuum or controlled atmosphere furnace, at a typical cost of $125.00 lot, and at least a one week delivery. The stem or shank of the tooling ball is located in a hole during use, and never sees any corrosive environment, so there is really no need for a stainless steel material. By using hardened tool steel, all of the same tolerances can be held as with the 440c construction and this material is actually, harder than the stainless steel.

The ProcessThe process is carried out in a vacuum chamber at a temperature between 50 and 600 degrees Celsius and is known as a “line of sight” technique, meaning that the atoms that are vaporized from the solid material travel through the vacuum chamber and embed themselves into whatever object is in its path.  Therefore, in order to coat the proper location of the object we must position the object in the chamber appropriately or rotate the object during deposition to completely coat the part. Different types of PVD coatings will result in different material properties.  Even though a coating may look the same or is made from the same material, how you make the coating has a strong impact on the properties of the coating and how it will perform in the application required.

Alcadyne’s primary coating process is physical vapor deposition (“PVD”) or PVD coating, a technique that describes a variety of vacuum deposition methods, such as cathodic arc, sputtering, and evaporation.

PVD coatings are thin film coatings where a solid material is vaporized in a vacuum chamber and deposited onto a target material.  It is used to change the surface properties of the object to be coated, where new mechanical, chemical, electrical or optical characteristics are needed.