S. Haas¹, T. Mueller¹, A. Gebeshuber¹, Christian Übleis¹, Christoph Lugmair¹, D. Heim², C. Forsich^2
1Rübig GmbH & Co KG Wels, Austria
²University of Applied Sciences Wels, Austria
Plasma nitriding and PACVD (plasma assisted CVD) are well known surface treatment technologies and are industrially established for decades. Main applications can be found in the fields of automotive, aerospace, tools and dies businesses as well as in new sustainable energy solutions like wind power gear boxes.
For increasing efficiency and lifetime as well as for reducing numbers of premature failures of industrially used components - which is directly affecting the maintenance, reliability, and operating costs of installed / used equipment - a variety of thermal and thermochemical (hardening, carburizing, nitriding, etc.) and coating technologies (PVD, PACVD) are used. Results are designed stress profiles (thermochemical treatment) to adjust fatigue behaviour and coating like DLC, Cr plating,… to design corrosion and wear properties.
However, besides these requirements a further new challenge is the trend to huge dimensions for engineering parts like high power wind turbines especially for offshore wind turbines. The increasing importance of size and therefore uniform coating of big complex shaped gears/bearings and the change in used materials versus temperature sensitive steel grades (“zero distortion”) pushed new developments to reduce coating temperature and design large area plasma nitriding/PACVD coating processes and combination of these technologies. Many of these parts are limiting the use of standard heat treatment/coating equipment and demand new and tailormade furnaces, coaters and processes.
It will be demonstrated on an example in the field of wind power industry how the combination of high surface engineering requirements on wear, friction, distortion, fatigue with reliable and consistent new heat treatment/coating equipment can be realized.