“…Accordingly, WC-based coatings on steel substrates have already been technically validated as an alternative to hard chrome plating, particularly for the most severe operating conditions [13,14,16,18]. The nature of the substrate (for instance, steel vs. aluminium), generally speaking, can affect the outcome of every coating process, but, in the case of thermal spraying techniques, this influence is not too large, so that it may be reasonably conjectured that HVOF-sprayed WC-based coatings can also offer good tribological properties when deposited onto Al substrates [2], even though some differences, in comparison to the traditional steel substrates, are likely to exist. Research studies concerning WC-based HVOFsprayed coatings on light alloys (Al alloys or Mg alloys) are therefore being carried out [2][3][4][19][20][21][22], but they are still not very numerous.…”