ICMCTF1999 Session G9: Decorative Vacuum Coatings

Thursday, April 15, 1999 8:30 AM in Room Town & Country

Thursday Morning

Start	Invited?	Item
8:30 AM		G9-1 Traditional Metallization Process for Decorative Coatings H.R. Powell, J.M. Ryan (Stokes Vacuum, Inc.) Emphasis will be placed on description of commonly used coating processes for decorative purposes based on thermal evaporation sources. Short introduction will mention development of process to present day commercial applications. Mention will be made of commonly decorated substrates with more detail on coating of molded plastic parts with thermally evaporated aluminum. Elements of the most common commercial process will be covered. These will include: base coating, evaporative coating and top coating. Glow discharge cleaning will be explained. Typical equipment will be shown pictorially including: chambers; filament bus bars; fixtring planets and planetary workholders. Control system and vacuum pumping system will be explained. Typical cycles will be shown on Pressures vs Time Plots.
8:50 AM		G9-2 Precision Cleaning Prior to Vacuum Coating B. Nevill, F.J. Fuchs (CAE Cleaning Technologies) Advances in Vacuum Coating Equipment and the addition of automation has resulted in higher production throughput and lower operating costs. This translates to lower costs per part and an increased opportunity for the application of vacuum coating technology as a viable alternative to more traditional coating techniques. These opportunities have resulted in a wider variety of applications and substrate materials, increasing the demand on the cleaning technology used prior to vacuum coating. Cleaning prior to the vacuum deposition is critical to the final quality and performance of the deposited film. Advances in the Vacuum equipment has resulted in improved control of the variables within the vacuum cycle. However, inefficiencies in the cleaning line will increase the likelihood of coating failure regardless of the steps taken after loading the vacuum chamber.This paper will discuss the advances in the precision cleaning industry and the technology available to maintain a high production yield of clean, dry parts prior to the vacuum cycle.
9:10 AM	Invited	G9-3 Setting up Mass Production of Decorative Coatings on Consumer Goods T. Hurkmans, G. van der Kolk, T. Trinh (Hauzer Techno Coating Europe B.V., The Netherlands); W. Fleischer, M. Franck (Hauzer Coating Centre, The Netherlands) PVD hard coatings on consumer goods like watches and writing utensils are known over ten years. Since a couple of years the same type of coatings one can buy on building hardware like doorhandles and faucets. Colours on the market are gold(-like), polished brass, black, stainless steel, and chromium. This was possible since the coating price per unit came down by designing special equipment for these type of applications. Typically three cubic meter size machines made it happen in comparison to the former one cubic meter vacuum chambers. The PVD coatings offer cosmetics in combination with wear and corrosion resistance. Although PVD processing is important in the finishing criteria, the logistics of mass production seemed to be as important in order to make it a successful operation. One should consider incoming control, racking, chemical cleaning, PVD processing, and quality control as a complete package of operation.
9:50 AM		G9-5 Transparent Ceramic Coatings: Property Distribution on 3D Parts B. Rother (MAT GmbH, Germany); A. Mucha (MAT GmbH Dresden, Germany) Transparent ceramics are prospective materials for several coating applications such as protection of decorative surfaces in automotive applications or functional coatings in several industrial branches. In many of these cases 3D parts have to be coated. As a typical example for 3D substrates car wheels are considered. Property distributions are evaluated on model samples as well as on original substrates. Laterally integrating properties such as corrosion and humidity tests as well as laterally limited properties such as morphology, thickness and hardness are investigated.
10:30 AM		G9-7 The Deposition of Decorative Coatings on Temperature Sensitive Substrates Using Reactive Magnetron Sputter Techniques K. Laing, D.G. Teer (Teer Coatings Ltd., United Kingdom) In order to obtain bright, shiny and "nonfingerprinting" coatings it is necessary to maintain a high ion to neutral ratio during the deposition. It is shown that such a ratio is readily obtained by using well designed unbalanced magnetrons in the closed field arrangement. The design, characteristics and optimisation of this sytem are discussed. It is further shown that in this system the ion to neutral ratio and thus the coating appearance is maintained approximately constant as the rate of deposition is varied. In order to deposit at low temperatures it is necessary only to reduce the magnetron power during deposition. Other considerations which are discussed are the control of the reactive gas flow in order to ensure coating stochiometry and colour, and the maintenance of the required conditions throughout the total chamber volume. Computer control is used to ensure total process repeatability.
10:50 AM	Invited	G9-8 Decorative Coating at Baldwin Hardware - The Solution Finds a Problem to Solve R.W. Sugg (Baldwin Corporation) By 1991 Baldwin Hardware Corporation, a division of Masco Corporation, had become the recognized leader in the high - end, residential door hardware market. Customer expectations for product performance in this market are very high, particularly for the durability of the bright brass finish. Proprietary, organic coatings had historically met these expectations, but ever tightening environmental, air quality regulations precluded expanded use of these solvent - based finishes. Organic replacements for the Baldwin coating were failing rapidly in the field. The division’s General Manager created the mandate, "find a finish that will last forever, or there might not be a Baldwin next year." That mandate would ultimately drive the creation of The Lifetime Finish^TM from Baldwin^O and set a new finish standard for the industry. The body of technology know as PVD, which had then been in commercial use for about 20 years, became the solution that would satisfy consumers’ demand for finish durability, ensure the company’s very existence and help provide the basis for new, high value added product lines.
11:30 AM		G9-10 Development of Process Controls for PVD ZrN Decorative Coatings P. Hatto (Multi-Arc Inc., United Kingdom); T. West, A. West, L. Kuruppu, T.J. Seifert, M. Chhowalla (Multi-Arc Inc.) The market for the decorative PVD coatings deposited on mass produced items, such as door furniture, plumbing and sanitary fittings, is potentially one of the most demanding encountered to date. Films providing a high degree of color consistency and product performance must be produced at low cost on thermally sensitive substrate materials. Satisfying these demands requires good control of process parameters, short cycle times and high up times, factors which, together with the demand for new coating colors and enhanced product performance, require reliable, self correcting, automatic process control based on effective plasma conditions monitoring. Establishing appropriate control algorithms requires detailed understanding of the inter-relationships between process parameters and process conditions. Optical emission spectroscopy (OES), enery resolved mass analysis and current density probe measurements are being used to characterize these relationships in commercial cathodic arc evaporation PVD coating equipment. Using ZrN as a model system, this paper discusses the influence of the principal deposition conditions on coating colors produced and consider techniques for in-process monitoring and control for achieving specific color requirements.