A flash of ceramic: General Industry Coverage

Because they’re quite hard and durable, ceramic coatings effectively protect cutting tools and wear parts. Metals, such as titanium aluminum or titanium, can be reactively deposited with nitrogen to form the ceramic coatings TiAlN or TiN. This can be done by either sputtering or cathodic arc evaporation. To date, the nonreactive deposition of ceramic materials such as tungsten carbide and titanium diboride could only be achieved via magnetron sputtering, in part because of the lack of an appropriate fixturing system for the more efficient cathodic arc evaporation method, according to sputtering target and cathode manufacturer Plansee.

Arc evaporation deposits coatings faster than magnetron sputtering, noted Paul J. Rudnik, who is based in Saline, Mich., and is the company’s sales and marketing manager – hard coating and coating product manager for North America. “In arc evaporation, you have more highly ionized particles and that gives a lot of energy to the coating,” he said.

Courtesy of Plansee

A fixturing system comprised of an integrated carrier plate and cathode ring from Plansee enables efficiently coating cutting tools with ceramic coatings via cathodic arc evaporation.