Fundamental economical aspects of functional coatings for tribological applications

Abstract

Today, a wide range of coatings for wear protection on different substrate materials in various technical applications is available. However, until now, only a few categories of hard coated components are established, such as cutting tools, machine parts for plastics processing or textile production and forming tools. The often high costs for hard coatings associated with the deposition depend, amongst others, mainly on the deposition process itself and the conception of the deposition unit. These aspects are important from the coater's point of view. For users of hard coatings for wear protection, it is important for the economy of a coating substrate system how the cost of the coating and the estimated increased lifetime of the coated component correlate in a given tribological system. This mainly determines the potential for coatings on commonly used machine parts in series production together with other resulting costs for the tribological system, modified by the coating. The contribution shows the flow of costs for tribological applications in their product life cycle. This analysis leads to the main cost factors. In addition, because of this, the future requirements for coating processes and coating units as well as the coating technology of mechanical components in general are obvious.