Tool coatings increase productivity in hard metals

Oerlikon Balzers Coating's Balinit Alcrona tool coating increases productivity in machining of even hard steels up to 54 HRC in both wet and dry operations.

Development of Oerlikon Balzers Coating's Balinit Alcrona tool coating is delivering dramatic increases in productivity in both dry and wet machining applications on a range of materials, including high hardness steels up to 54 HRC.

Balinit Alcrona is a member of Oerlikon Balzers Coating's G6 generation of AlCrN (aluminium chromium nitride) tool coatings that are expanding the performance envelope of a wide range of carbide and high speed steel (hss) cutting tools, when compared to conventional titanium-based coatings.

These benefits are being seen on tools as diverse as solid carbide end mills, indexable inserts, hss end mills and carbide and hss and carbide hobs.

Tools coated with Balinit Alcrona are delivering much better tool life than is possible with TiAlN, TiCN or AlTiN coated tools.

In one example, a roughing application on a 52 HRC steel, using a 10 mm solid carbide end mill the flank wear using TiAlN coated tool was measured at 115 micron after 34 minutes of operation.

Under the same conditions the flank wear reduced to 40 microns on a cutter coated with Balinit Alcrona.

When finish milling the same material at 200 m/min surface speed the Balinit Alcrona coated tool exhibited a 255 per cent increase in tool life.

Similarly, when hobbing users are witnessing vastly improved tool life over previous coatings.

Typically, using a high speed steel hob at 200 m/min surface speed, on a DIN 1.7131 steel, the tool life of the Balinit Alcrona coated hob was almost 80 per cent better than a hob coated with AlTiN.

A similar performance increase is seen on carbide hobs running at 260 m/min (roughing) and 500 m/min finishing.

Part of the success of Balinit Alcrona are its resistance to oxidation and its hot hardness properties.

The coating offers improved resistance to oxidation at temperatures up to 1100C and a markedly greater hot hardness than conventional coatings.

This means the coating is stable under conditions of extremely high thermal load.

These unique properties place Balinit Alcrona well ahead of its rivals.

Ideally suited to conventional machining operations, as well as to applications involving heavy mechanical and thermal stresses, the unrivalled wear resistance of Balinit Alcrona allows the potential of modern CNC machine tools to be used to the full.

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