Aluminum-chromium-based coatings are now more wear-resistant

       

The Vienna University of Technology announced a new discovery about the wear-resistant coating of aluminum chromium oxide: a small amount of iron will make the coating more wear-resistant.

The aluminum-chromium-based ceramic coating is particularly hard and resistant to oxidation, thereby protecting drill bits, milling cutters, indexable inserts and other tools from wear. In order to achieve abrasion resistance, this coating needs to be able to withstand high temperatures and extreme mechanical loads. Adding a small amount of iron can improve the material properties of the aluminum chromium oxide coating. The iron-added coating is deposited with a high proportion of wear-resistant phases, thereby increasing the tool life and mechanical elasticity.



 



The formation and influence of droplets



Hard coatings based on aluminum chromium oxide are used for arc evaporation tools. This involves arc melting of the cathode material in a tiny amount. After reacting with oxygen, the evaporated material is deposited on the substrate to form a thin ceramic hard coating. In this process, the droplets are incorporated into the hard coating. These defects are partially composed of pure metal particles ranging in size from a few nanometers to a few hundred nanometers. The droplets make the coating on the tool rougher, which in turn negatively affects the flow of debris during drilling, for example. This tool can drill very deep holes, and the generated debris can block the notches.



The effect after adding iron has been greatly improved. Compared with pure aluminum chromium oxide coatings, aluminum chromium iron-based coatings form fewer and smaller droplets, which can help the formation of particularly wear-resistant phases.



Powder metallurgy manufacturing technology enables wococarbide.com to produce targets and cathodes with precisely defined material compositions, such as aluminum ferrochromium. wococarbide.com uses advanced technologies such as the SPS machine (SPS = Spark Plasma Sintering) to quickly and economically produce target samples of various sizes and components.