Benefits of Titanium Nitride Coating

Friction has a big impact on the cutting process, and its worst outcome shows as tool wear. If you can manage the temperature increase caused by friction, you can prolong the life of your cutting tools.

One of the best ways to keep your tools cool is by applying a coating. A tool coating can provide a thermal barrier that can help your tools last longer. Tool coatings can also increase lubricity to improve chip evacuation.

Using a vacuum process called physical vapor deposition, or PVD, different combinations of materials are applied to cutting tools to coat them for specific performance benefits. 

Titanium Nitride Coating

Titanium nitride (TiN) is a protective tool coating that unites titanium and nitride into a hard ceramic material. The soft gold finished color belies the hardness of a TiN-coated tool. This coating application is a good universal coating for working with ferrous materials like iron, steel, alloy steel, and low carbon steel.

TiN is a biocompatible finish, and a TiN coating does not react with tissue, blood, bones, or bodily fluids. This makes the coating a good working material used for medical, dental, and food applications. In fact, some medical-device makers use a TiN coating on surgical tools.

TiN Advantages

A TiN coating can be applied to all types of tools, including drills, end mills, reamers, and thread mills, and it gives your cutting tools a range of advantages. The coating adds a high hardness factor, improves abrasive wear resistance, and increases the lubricity of cutting tools for better chip removal, and it can increase a tool’s life span. 

The Right Process

While choosing the right coating is important, it’s also critical to choose a cutting tool manufacturer with the knowledge and experience to apply any coating properly. MITGI offers several in-house coating options using processes that create the proper coating thickness for each tool, each time. When we apply coating to cutting tools, we batch tools of the same cutting diameter to apply the optimal amount of coating for the tool size. By coating our tools in-house, we also can make sure that the coated reamer we supply six months from now for your work will have the exact same coating thickness as the reamer you’re currently using. We know that coating thickness can impact the tool size, and we consider that when making our cutting tools.

We can apply TiN tool coatings with a lead time of just a day or two. If you want to consult with experts on tool coatings, reach out to MITGI, and we will be happy to help you select the right coating for your application.