Coating Service

Component Coatings

... fuel in the internal combustion engine. Examples could be gears, shafts, housings, bearings and bushings etc. It is important to draw a line between components and tools: tools are designed/made to produce components. Since each tool produces numerous components, there are much fewer tools than components.

Coatings for engineering components are primarily intended for extension of their useful life. Essentially, this is achieved through providing a superficial layer/coating with the properties that are tailored to combat those factors which tend to shorten the life the component life: e.g. wear, corrosion, abrasion.  A typical example would be a wear resistant coating on the pump component, providing increased lifetime due to maintaining the integrity of the component.

Another major reason for coating the components is providing special properties to the surface. These properties usually lack in the bulk material and therefore need to be provided through surface modification. Particular properties depend on the application and can vary significantly. Examples could be friction modification, changes in surface energy, electrical or thermal conductivity, electrochemistry and so on.

There exists two large groups of coatings that are applied to components: carbon-based and ceramic c oatings.

Carbon-based coatings include a family of amorphous carbon films, known also as diamond-like-carbon or DLC.  DLC coatings are among the newest man-made materials, which provide surface functionalities going far beyond the capabilities of bulk material. Invented in 1970’s, these coatings received the first commercial acceptance for protecting hard disk drives against catastrophic consequences of accidental contact of the read-write head with the surface of the disk. In 1990’s DLC coatings literally enabled the operation of fuel injectors in gasoline and diesel engines, providing necessary protection against wear, scuffing and other adverse effects of lubricant-lean friction. This century was marked by penetration of DLC’s in the other areas of the engine, where wear protection and friction reduction is either manadatory for reliable operation or highly desirable for emissions reduction. Due to their low friction coefficient, DLC films usually perform very well in tribological applications, which makes them a coating of choice for a large group of applications requiring reduced friction. In addition, DLC’s provide excellent corrosion resistance.  Systec SVS have developed a unique DLC deposition technology – NoveLC,  producing the first HIPIMS-assisted DLC coating.

Ceramic coatings are traditionally used for protection against wear and, to a lesser extent, for reduction of friction. Most common coating for this purpose are based on Cr-N  with varying ratio of constituents.  Depending on the deposition method, these coatings may also provide some degree of corrosion protection.  Another examples of frqequently used coatings are TiN, AlTiN.