It even applies to PVD equipment: bigger, better, faster. Considering the enormous number of machine manufacturers, competitiveness today is only possible with the best hardware. Faster pumping, faster coating, more coatings, less consumables, lower maintenance costs; these are the main priorities of PVD machine users. There are several developments to fulfill all these requirements. But even the best coating machine is a worthless investment if it does not also produce the best coatings.

It is possible, in addition to the standard pumping system, to employ so-called cold traps, which freeze the residual gas at cold surfaces. Instead of using oil-driven roughing pumps, the practically maintenance-free dry pumps are recommended. Today, it is often possible to operate at substantially higher process pressures and gas flows and at the same time to increase coating rates by a factor of 2 - 3 without sacrificing coating quality. Today, PVD coatings are manufactured using low-voltage arc, sputter or arc technology. The objective of many arc source developments (steered arc, LARC, NDAJ^TM, etc.) is to steer the arc as quickly as possible across the entire target surface. A high gas and molecule ionization rate during the coating process is crucial for the speed of coating and quality of the coating structure. Additional magnetic fields or an additional plasma arc make facilitate this. Pulsed or high-frequency voltage supplies have been developed for sources or as a substrate supply enabling fast and new processes. Rapid substrate heating and rapid cooling at vacuum conditions present further challenges to modern machine manufacturers.

But just as important as the machine itself are the peripherals and interfaces. In the end, either the best package or best synergy of machine, coatings and peripherals is the one that will win the race.

The real spreading of the coating technology is achieved when the small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) use the coating units for their tools, molds, dies and even for their products on their shop floor. This coating technology should be reliable, simple to operate, but it has to work on the highest technological level to produce high performance coatings. The LARC®-technology (LAteral Rotating Cathodes) meets these requirements.

The presentation introduces the core features of this technology focused on applications, realized by their users worldwide: 1) Modular design for using in small, medium size and large series. 2) Deposition of Nanocomposites to avoid limitations of conventional coatings. 3) Advantages of the integrated coating into the manufacturing process. 4) Applications in the tooling, molding, car and aircraft industries.

The Revetest Scratch Tester is the ideal tool for characterizing the mechanical properties of PVD and CVD coatings. For more than 25 years, CSM Instruments has been developing the Revetest to measure the adhesion and scratch resistance of coatings. With our extensive experience gained over the years, we have developed the Revetest Xpress specifically for industrial Quality Control. The Xpress concept is a simple and robust instrument which is very easy to use by untrained technicians as well as more experienced personnel within the coatings company. The instrument naturally conforms to the latest industrial standards (ISO/EN 1071, ASTM G171, JIS 3255, etc.).

The scratch test consists of scratching a surface with an indenter or a ball to characterize the critical loads at which failure occurs. Depending on the instrument options, it has the possibility to simultaneously detect the acoustic emission, the friction force and the penetration and/or to analyze through a microscope the type of critical failure mode encountered. The scratch analysis allows the user to determine and investigate the phenomena encountered along the length of the scratch, e.g., cracking, deformation, spallation, buckling, etc.

This paper concentrates on characterisation of hard coatings using the Revetest scratch adhesion test. The three coatings chosen consist of TiN, TiCN and ZrCN, all of which are deposited by CVD and find use as cutting tool overcoats for minimising wear. At the end of the paper, some complete scratches for different materials are given. The new advances of the scratch testing technology will be presented at the conference, such as multi-cycle scratching, pre- and post-scan modes and incremental load scratching.