Beschichtungstechnologien für Spritzgiesswerkzeuge

The present book fills an essential gap in the field of tool design. Currently, the trend is to push the technical possibilities in plastic manufacturing, such as achievable flow path lengths, the use of abrasive and corrosive plastics, and also the attainable service lives, to their limits. Various approaches are available. One is the establishment of new processing methods. Secondly, increasingly optimized functional materials are being used for the construction of plastic processing tools. A third, somewhat neglected option for functionalization is coatings in the context of plastic processing, which is partly due to a lack of available information on the state of the art and application possibilities.

This leads to a division of the content into four parts. First, the steel materials primarily used for the construction of tools in plastic processing are introduced. This is followed by the current state of various coating technologies. Existing coating technologies are presented and characterized regarding their applicability in tool technology within the realm of plastic processing.

The third part deals with the characterization of the deposited layers. Here, the focus is on characterizing the actual layer, such as chemical composition, layer structure, and layer thickness. Additionally, the measurement methods for determining the functional properties of the deposited layers, such as hardness and wear resistance, thermal properties, thermal conductivity, and also tribological properties, are presented.

Finally, the application of appropriate coatings is illustrated with practical examples from plastics technology.