No abstract

Improving the surface quality of various machine components can extend their lifespans by several orders of magnitude. Thin film coating is one approach that can be used to enhance machine part surface quality. In this work, three different thin film coatings (i.e, CrN, CrC and Cr-C-N) were statistically compared for surface quality improvement of fishing-net weaving machine component, namely an upper hook. All coatings were deposited utilizing DC sputtering technique. The effects of coating types on hardness for both hardchrome and non hardchrome coated upper hooks were systematically investigated using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) were used to examine the surface quality of the machine component. This study found that CrN gave very high hardness values of 13.042 GPa for hardchrome coated upper hooks and 12.583 GPa for non-hardchrome coated upper hooks. However, the averages hardness of the hardchrome coated and non-hardchrome coated upper hooks were not significantly different at the 95% confidence level.

Experimental analysis was performed to evaluate the performances of hard-chrome plated stainless steel and TiAlSiN and TiCrAlSiN hard coatings deposited on cast stainless steel based on wear experimental data. The wear tests were carried out using a reciprocating wear tester modified from ASTM G133-05.The analysis of variance and other statistical tools were used to explore the influences of coating type, applied load and workpiece surface roughness on the average weight loss values of the workpiece materials. The results showed that coating type, applied load, and workpiece surface roughness and the interactions between coating type and applied load as well as between coating type and workpiece surface roughness were statistically significant at the level of significance of 0.05. Furthermore, the TiCrAlSiN coating had the highest wear resistance followed by the TiAlSiN and the hard-chrome plated stainless steel, respectively.