BALIQ: the journey of wear-resistant coatings tailored to your needs

Since its introduction to the market in 2011 the S3p technology has revealed new horizons in thin-film coating for tools and components: this breakthrough technology developed by Oerlikon Balzers combines the benefits of the two conventional thin-film coating technologies: arc evaporation and sputtering. This innovation has opened opportunities for new applications and industries where tools and components are exposed to tough daily use. The S3p technology has laid the foundation for the new BALIQ coating family presented in 2013. Underlined by the slogan “Follow the Flow of Intelligence!” it was possible for the first time to meet the exact functional expectations of our customers’ requirements with endless and flexible possibilities in shaping the coating structure combined with a wide range of coating materials. More about BALIQ: https://www.oerlikon.com/balzers/com/en/portfolio/balzers-surface-solutions/pvd-and-pacvd-based-coatings/baliq/ More about S3p: https://www.oerlikon.com/balzers/com/en/portfolio/surface-technologies/pvd-based-processes/s3p/s3p-scalable-pulsed-power-plasma-balzers/ The journey kicked off with BALIQ MICRO ALCRONOS for microtools and BALIQ ALCRONOS for taps. BALIQ for microtools is targeting new markets and applications where smallest holes with exceptional precision are required. The result: in medical applications the tool life increased up to 400%. Only one year later, in 2014, three new BALIQ coatings for cutting tools were brought to market: BALIQ ALTINOS and BALIQ TISINOS for finishing applications and indexable inserts, BALIQ MICRO TISINOS for micromachining of hardened steels up to 70 HRC as well as BALIQ ALCRONOS and BALIQ TISINOS for reamers. Just like the previously introduced coatings these application-specific coatings have nothing left to be desired and have extended tool lives thanks to exact and sharp cutting edges. Customers appreciate the process reliability and longer service life and thus benefit from significant cost and time savings. When machining turbine blades made of stainless steel, the lifetimes of endmills could be extended by 90%. The longer tool life and increased cutting speed, which is possible through our BALIQ coatings, reduce clearly manufacturing costs. Besides, the ultra-smooth surface of the BALIQ coated tool guarantees highest surface quality – of course without the need of post-processing the workpiece. The next innovative step was taken in 2017 with BALIQ UNIQUE, which marked the end of grey shades of performance cutting tools. With BALIQ UNIQUE colour has come into play literally for the first time. And the brand-new range of shiny colours are more than just pleasing on the eye as they also meet the high demands of tool manufacturers, who need to differentiate, classify and visualise their products, and on top of that to indicate the degree of abrasion. In 2018, the sustainable enhancement of S3p and more application-specific BALIQ coatings continued: special coatings, which serve the high demands of drilling featuring BALIQ TISINOS and BALIQ ALTINOS, for milling applications BALIQ ALCRONOS and BALIQ TISINOS, the latter also available for taps. In the same year, BALIQ ALCRONOS was be presented for metal forming & plastic processing. Applications in this industry require extremely smooth coatings to ensure high productivity and increased machine utilisation when forming demanding materials. In 2019, Oerlikon Balzers introduced BALIQ CARBOS. This amorphous hydrogen-free carbon (a-C) coating features an exceptional combination of high hardness, low friction and low roughness. BALIQ CARBOS outperforms hydrogenated DLC coatings in many engineering applications such as motorsports where contact pressure and sliding velocity interact in extreme ways. With a high proportion of tetrahedral bonds (50-60%), BALIQ CARBOS provides substantially higher abrasive wear resistance than DLC. The latest in a series of outstanding innovations, all based on revolutionary S3p technology, is BALIQ AUROS, the high-end solution for threading tools. Threading is often one of the last manufacturing steps, and in addition to substrate material, geometry and design of the cutting edge, high-quality tools and their optimum coating are essential. By combining an extremely wear-resistant AlCrN-based layer with a top layer, welding between the tool surface and the workpiece is reduced. This results in less wear, minimised torque and a more even chip flow – thus: more reliable, more powerful tools with a significantly longer service life. The BALIQ coatings that Oerlikon Balzers has presented since 2013 has been the take-off to a continuous and sustainable development of unique coatings for many applications and industries. We are still at the beginning of this brilliant journey. Follow us and explore with Oerlikon Balzers the art of coating in the years to come!