Comparison of mechanical properties of various PVD hard coatings for forming tools

In this paper we compare the basic mechanical properties of PVD hard coatings which are currently used in company Koncar Alati for wear protection of forming tools manufactured on request of the Electrolux Group, with emphasis on the company Electrolux Home Products Denmark A/S. This company has high demands on tool performance for machining and forming of several different workpiece materials, such as steel sheet, stainless steel, aluminium and Teflon-coated sheet. Two different deposition methods were used for preparation of hard coatings: sputtering using unballanced magnetron sources – CC800 (CemeCon) and cathode arc evaporation (BAI 1200 (Balzers)). The investigated coatings were deposited on four different tool steels. We found that the hard coatings investigated in this work showed wide range of mechanical properties ; microhardness in the range of 900-3200 HV, critical load for total delamination in the range of 75-135 N, indentation modulus in the range of 120-390 GPa, while the scratching coefficient was in the range 0.02-0.09.