Properties of PVD coatings manufactured on X38CrMoV5-1 steel for plastic moulding applications

In plastics moulding industry a lot of parts sustain in relative movement: ejectors, slides, dies, etc. Some seizing or micro-welding may appear, especially when lubrication is not used. In this paper, PVD coatings have been obtained thanks to hybrid Cathodic Arc Evaporation system. Several properties of the coatings have been investigated such as chemical composition, microstructure, friction coefficient at ambient and high temperature conditions, nanohardness and their modulus of elasticity.