SURFACE HARDENING OF TITANIUM AND TITANIUM ALLOYS

Titanium alloys, due to their mechanical characteristics and corrosion resistance, are increasingly used in place of high alloy steels in engineering applications.

However, these materials have relatively low resistance to wear, with tribological characteristics which are generally not sufficient for most applications involving friction.

This problem can be solved with surface hardening treatments.

Vacuum has developed a nitriding cycle which obtains a hardened layer of around 2-5 um with a hardness of at least 1000 HV0.1, without using surface coatings.
If this is not sufficient, the hardened surface can then be coated with a PVD TiN coating.

The combination of these two treatments not only increases the corrosion resistance of the alloy, but considerably increases its resistance to wear, with very high values of surface hardness.

ADVANTAGES:

• Considerable increase in resistance to wear, with surface hardness in excess of 2000 HV0.05