Xtreme Blue

Understanding Nano-Coatings

When you stop to think about it, your cutting tools are getting absolutely put through the ringer. They are subjected to:

• High localised stress at the edge of the tool
• High temperatures along the rake face
• Sliding chips along the rake face
• Sliding of the tool along the newly machined workpiece

All of this without coolants and sometimes continuously for hours on end. All of this heat causes the immediate edge of the cutter to reach 550-750 degrees Celsius! Not to mention the sheer amount of force placed on the cutter by the spindle and chip flow.

All of this heat is essentially melting away the cobalt (and titanium) light alloys which bond the wolfram particles of the carbide together within the rod. This begins to occur at temperatures as low as 300C.
In other words: the glue holding the rod together is being slowly melted

Now don’t get me wrong, the titanium carbide (Ti-C) that we use in our rods can withstand a bucketload of heat. But, just like a bloke in the shed over summer in QLD, if you let them cook for long enough they will start to get a bit rough around the edges.

Here is where coatings come in. Coatings have the following benefits:

• Lower friction
• Higher resistance to heat
• Higher resistance to impact
• Diffusion barrier between the tool and the chip

The DLC (Diamond-like Carbon) coating used on our aluminium cutters can

withstand 350-450C and the nano-tech coating used in our Xtreme Blue cutters can withstand up to 1200C. Just picture the bloke in the hot shed getting an aircon, fans, a cold wet towel and an ice-cold beer. This is what a coating is to your cutter.

However, this is only the heat resistant side of things. Coatings also increase the hardness of the cutter substantially (up to 4200HV), absorb and disperse impact and reduce cutting friction.

By this point I bet you are thinking: “Coatings sound awesome, but if they are so great, why doesn’t everyone use coatings?”

Coatings are great, but they increase the thickness and radius of the cutting edge on your tools. Just as on a worn cutter, the once sharp edge will be rounded and dull. Putting a thick coating on a new sharp cutter essentially dulls the edge. This will result in a worse finish and more stress on the cutter, which defeats the purpose entirely.

This is the exciting part of nano-tech coating, innovative coating application technology allows the special titanium coating to be applied at a thickness of 0.0008-0.001mm. This is less than half the thickness of more common coatings, such as DLC (>0.002mm).

Therefore, cutting tools with nano-tech coatings have all the longevity benefits of coating, with no reduction in the machined finish or increased stress on the cutter. In summary nano-coated cutters have:

• Increased resistance to heat and impact
• Increased hardness
• Same sharp edge as uncoated bits

This is what allows Xtreme Blue cutters to cut two times as many boards as regular uncoated cutters.