Boost Industrial Tooling With Wear Resistant Coatings
Various industries, and the society they serve, constantly demand precision, higher performance products delivered at a lower cost to the environment and at a lower financial cost. The result? Constantly under pressure, industrial processes and tooling must find ways to show a greater ROI (return on investment) and be sustainable and more efficient.
Thanks, in part, to wear resistant coatings for industrial tooling engineers can better design industrial processes with tooling that is more productive, breaks down less often, and last longer. At the same time, energy and other resources are consumed less. While having greater wear and corrosion resistance, the tooling components must also have a high strength to weight ratio.
Without light metals and light alloys such as magnesium and aluminum, options for engineers would be severely limited and based largely on steel tooling components. By using surface coating solutions, customization of light alloys can be executed to the specific tooling requirements.
Industrial Tooling Performance Boosts
Nearly every stress imaginable is suffered by industrial tooling during its operational life involving manufacturing processes. This includes exposure to electromagnetic radiation, high volume wear, magnetic and electrical fields, extreme temperature variation, corrosive chemicals, abrasion, and more. What could possibly stand up to all of that?
Without resistant coatings, components fail due to operational stresses. That results in downtime and damage – and that means wasted money. Certainly, that will never do.
Though the necessary performance characteristics may be found in materials such as ceramics or steel, they are heavy. Additionally, they may require an antibacterial wash, lubricant, or regular cleaning as well as consuming more operation energy. The process becomes more complex because of this. That means there is more that can go wrong. What’s more, also having an environmental effect, expenses increase because consumables cost money.
Lightweight Metals
Titanium, magnesium, aluminum, and other lightweight metals have superior strength to weight ratios and provide many other benefits. Unfortunately, they may have low stiffness, wear easily, or be vulnerable to chemical attack in their pure state. For tooling components, that’s not ideal. However, by adding surface coatings, they are now perfect for the job.
Industrial Tooling – Plating and Conversion Coatings
The service life of tooling can be increased by a combination of bespoke surface coatings and light alloy components. This also helps reduce resource consumption, downtime, and failure rates. That means a more sustainable, profitable process with higher productivity.
Light alloy tooling coatings:
- Plasma electronic oxidation
- Plasma spray coatings
- Nitriding
- Electroplating
Choosing Tooling Coating – Key Factors
The following should be seriously considered when making a choice of tooling coating:
- Wear reducing technologies and advanced surface coatings are adaptable.
- The material and coating selection will be driven by factors such as operating conditions, position in the plant/line, tool function, and more.
- A production assets whole life performance can be impacted by the right or wrong choice of a tooling coating.
Choose A&A Coatings For Your Wear Resistant Coatings
When it comes to wear resistant coatings, we offer the latest and greatest choices applied through the most recently developed and proven techniques.
Contact A&A Coatings if you’d like more information or assistance.
