Surface Treatments and Coatings Improve Tool Performance & Life Span
Applying coatings and surface treatments to cutting tools makes them more resistant to heat, breakage, chip build-up and welding, and a host of other complications. Regal Cutting Tools offers a variety of these processes and coatings, each designed to address problems often encountered when drilling, tapping, and milling specific materials. Selecting the correct coating for each workpiece and application is critical to extend tool life and improve productivity.
This guide outlines the characteristics each coating and treatment lends to cutting tools.
Oxide and Nitride
Oxide is porous, creating tiny crevices that retain lubricant that keeps the tool cool. It is often applied to general-purpose taps used with fluid. Like oxide, nitride was one of the first treatments invented to make cutting tools last longer. Nitride gives tools additional hardness for greater wear resistance. As might be expected, coating tools with both oxide and nitride results in both better lubricant retention and surface hardness, making them workhorses on tough and abrasive metals. Regal’s oxide and nitride treatments give these tools a black finish.
Titanium Nitrides
Regal’s tools coated with titanium nitride and its alloys including carbon, aluminum, and titanium perform even better under difficult work conditions.
- Titanium Nitride – Tools coated in gold-colored TiN gain hardness from the titanium and lubricity that prevents chip welding, making them good options for general-purpose applications.
- Titanium Carbo Nitride – High-speed steel milling and tapping creates heat. The carbon not only adds hardness, but also decreases friction when cutting adhesive pieces such as aluminum.
- Aluminum Titanium Nitride and Titanium Aluminum Nitride – These coatings form an ultrathin layer of aluminum oxide between the tool and workpiece, allowing carbide tools with this coating to maintain their hardness at high speeds and temperatures and when dry machining or working with cast iron and other abrasive metals.
Chromium Nitride
Combining low friction, high hot hardness and corrosion resistance, chromium nitride coatings form a barrier that prevents the cutting material from forming chemical bonds with the tool.
Aluminum Chromium Nitride
Maintaining the hot hardness of chromium nitride, the addition of aluminum gives this coating additional wear resistance under mechanical stress. Often used in dry cutting applications, this coating possesses a very high oxidation temperature, as it transfers heat away from the tool and into the chip.
Tungsten Carbide
Highly resistant to temperature and friction, these coatings also assist in chip evacuation.
Triton
A high-density diamond-like carbon, Triton is extra resistant to corrosion, abrasion, and adhesion. It is often used to machine nonferrous metals such as aluminum and abrasive plastics in in minimal-lubricant settings.
Zirconium Nitride
By creating a thin ceramic shield, this coating adds lubricity and smoothness to cutting edges for less friction and chip affinity. These characteristics leave more precise cuttings and increase tool life by preventing built-up edges when machining gummy materials such as titanium alloys.
Coating and treating the surfaces of cutting tools can greatly increase their life spans and make their work more precise. However, there is no “one size fits all” coating for every operation. Coatings have been designed to address specific problems. Regal Cutting Tools offers many surface treatment and coatings that increase hardness, aid in chip removal and loading, and stand up to abrasive and adhesive work materials.
For more help choosing the coating that matches your application, contact Regal today.