Jeffrey Barlow1, Ryan Lake1, Christoph Schiffers2
1CemeCon Inc., Horseheads, NY
2CemeCon AG; Würselen, Germany
The global consumption of cutting tools will exceed 25 billion USD in 2025. Metal cutting is by far the dominating production process despite all advances in 3D printing. The vast majority of all cutting tools worldwide are being coated for longer tool life, the ability to process high-end materials such as titanium and heat-resistant superalloys and for improving the efficiency of the machining process. Cutting tools is a very competitive market and countries with high labor costs are forced to continuously improve their products. New and improved coatings are the key to an increased share in the cutting tool market since the other areas have shown only incremental progress.
PVD technology is clearly dominating the cutting tool coating market. It was a long journey from the early beginnings around 1980 with TiN films made with Arc technology over binary TiAlN designs with sputtering to today’s highly engineered HiPIMS processes. HiPIMS – first proposed by a research group around Prof. Kouznetsov around the year 2000 – meant a revolution to the PVD world. The HiPIMS method combines favourable properites such as smooth films without droplets with superb adhesion to the substrate and a very dense morphology of the film. Research from academia and equipment manufacturers brought about innovations such as HiPIMS bias synchronisation, chopped HiPIMS and the positive kick at the end of the pulse.
Hard machining >55 HrC, cutting titanium and CoCr for medical and dental applications, nickel-based high-temperature alloys for jet engines and energy generation, the light-weight material aluminum and heavy-duty machining for wind mills, oil and gas, and the transportation sector drive the development of new coating materials. Miniaturization is another clear trend: cutting tools become smaller and more precise. PVD coatings and in particular HiPIMS with its unique combination of favorable properties opens new business opportunities for cutting tool makers.