Tool coating shows its mettle

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 steels up to 54 HRC. The AlCrN (aluminium chromium nitride) tool coatings expand the performance envelope of a wide range of carbide and high speed steel cutting tools, as compared to conventional titanium-based coatings. Balzers is the first company to produce AlCrN coatings for practical applications. Benefits are being seen on tools as diverse as solid carbide endmills, indexable inserts, HSS endmills and carbide and HSS and carbide hobs. In one example, a roughing application on a 52 HRC steel using a 10 mm solid carbide endmill saw flank wear using a TiAlN coated tool of 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.