Page 48 - MetalForming August 2012

Tooling Technology
Coated tools at Penn United Technologies have enabled the company, on one job in particular that draws 0.5-in.-deep stainless-steel cups, to increase from 15,000 to millions of hits before the tools require maintenance.
“We can perform component modeling and also analyze sub- strate material,” explains Bell. “In some cases we rec- ommend that the metalformer specify higher-quality tool material that provides a superior platform for applying the tool coating. Then we use our laboratory tools to analyze tool sur- faces prior to apply- ing the coating.”
The Right Coating for the Application
For Penn United’s difficult deep- draw medical-part application, analy- sis led to the selection of Phygen’s For- tiPhy PVD process to coat affected tools. One reason stems from the fact that for coatings to work in difficult applications such as the cup draw, adhesion is key.
The FortiPhy process creates a dense, thin nanocrystalline coating structure that, according to Bell, adheres to virtually any tool-steel sub- strate. The plasma-arc-acceleration coating process reportedly eliminates as much as 90 percent of macro parti- cles and occlusions present in the nor- mal structure of PVD deposition arc coatings. Instead, creation of highly energetic nanoparticles of 14 to 40 nm in size enables high density and improved adhesion—reportedly a level of adhesion three times higher than is possible with conventional coating processes.
what Bell refers to as a custom-engi- neered solution. Under this process, Phygen uses laboratory tools and research facilities to perform failure analysis to determine the root cause of a particular tool-part failure. Then, the tool-coating company works with the customer to tailor its coating capabil- ities to meet specific application needs.
In general, coatings provide an inert tool surface. This eliminates the weld- ing effect Bell describes that occurs between similar tool and part materi- als, removing galling as a problem.
“It is virtually impossible to form stainless steel into complex shapes without using some sort of coating solution,” says Bell.
46 MetalForming/August 2012
www.metalformingmagazine.com