Vacuum coatings as a way to improve durability

Coating for all your vehicle parts

Whether you're a hobbyist or a professional builder of bikes, trikes and other sporty vehicles, the best part about the designing process is getting yourself a custom paint job. For the ultimate in durable and beautiful but above all thin coating there is nothing that can beat vacuum coating. Instead of relying on paints and airbrush systems that can be tricky and have the risk of chipping the paint unless you're having it done by a (high paid) professional who layers on 5 ultra thin coats of paint, you can have the machines set to the finest details and layer on just one ultra thin layer that is more durable than anything your professional airbrush artist can. There's just no comparison.

What thin coatings make possible

Imagin being able to create a coat as thin as a few molecules and using it in aerospace technology. You could significantly reduce the amount of paint needed on an airplane which reduces the weight dramatically. On a jumbo-jet this would save on fuel expenditure, but in sleek fighter jets it could mean the difference between life and death as the lighter the plane, the more possibilities, the easier turns will be.

Refurbishing guns can really create a super fine coat that is resistant to the heat and other specifications that go with guns and gunpowder. A very specialized job that requires the utmost of care.

In aeronautics it could eventually mean space becomes more accessible to us. In lifting a spaceship out of our gravitational field every ounce counts.

In automotives it could help save energy in the same way, but the application can be used to lay a coating on the windows helping prevent being blinded by a low hanging sun, or even, in the future, garnering solar energy to feed the cars electrical systems.

Less use of materials, in particular the solvents that are so damaging to our environment that are generally used in the classic paintjob means we are doing less harm to our planet. As such it's a great way of caring for our environment as well. As you can tell, I'm a big fan of vacuum coating.

The process of vacuum coating

You can choose all dimensions of the coating, ranging from thickness, complexity to color and shinyness. You can have a metalized coating or just layer of several molecules thickness of your favorite coloring agent. The possibilities are endless.

It's not just vehicles that you can customize in this manner. You can apply the coating on virtually any object. A great gift item is a metalized babyshoe. Art objects can be coated top to bottom to create a really shiny finish that can add to beauty of the object you've given shape. Another area where these coatings can be instrumental is the finish of medical equipment which needs to be strong, easy to clean and durable.

Buying coating equipment

Another option, if you're in manufacturing is to buy the coating equipment itself and have it set to create your particular coating for your specialized manufacturing item. Vergason sells the equipment for such operations as well als delivering the finest custom coating finishes on demand. Wether you're in sporting goods (weightlifting components) or the novelty industry (like the babyshoes or winners prizes, cups, etc.) or you're in the automotive industry (think about the shiny parts of the car, like the lights, the chrome). The finest, thinnest coat can be ordered at Vergason or made by your own sputtering systems.

Tools are always sharp with ceramic coating

Some tools don't wear

Many tools are just fine without any protection whatsover. They'll stay sharp almost forever and look as shiny as the day you bought them for years on end.

Those are the tools that rarely get used, that are just sitting pretty in your toolshed while you and your mates play poker and have a beer. For the rest of us, tools are something that get's used a lot and most tools, in particular anything with a sharp edge on it tends to be subject to a lot of wear and tear. Protecting these tools would mean a serious step forward in the enjoyment of the use of sharp tools.

Now there's some new technologies out there that can actually make this come true! It's called vapor deposition and it's a way of depositing a ultra thin coating of a hard material onto almost any surface. The process is a specialty of the folks down at Vergason and they cater to the needs of a variety of industries, from the medical to the molding industry. With their vacuum coating process they can coat pretty much anything without having to heat the objects very much which allows them to coat metal objects without having to be concerned about the shape or hardness of the material changing.

You've probably seen these types of instruments in the kitchen. Kitchen knifes that won't wear out, made with a ceramic edge. Ring a bell? Yes, these things actually do work and they do stay sharp for a long long time.

How do ceramic coatings work?

One of the cutting tools we're all familiar with that has a hard ceramic-like coating sit's right in your mouth. Yes, I am talking about teeth. We all know that the teeth are reasonably soft and boney on the inside and if it weren't for the thin layer of dental enemal on them we would all lose our teeth very early on in life. The thin layer of something hard protects them from harm and gives them that nice, clean bite.

In much the same way putting a ceramic coating on, let's say a sawblade, can keep it from becoming dull very fast. A necessary innovation in particular since cutting the new MDF type of materials (which is really hard pressed cardboard) can dull an ordinary sawblade in an awful hurry. Any housewife worth her salt can tell you that cutting paper or cardboard with a pair of scissors will make the scissors unfit to cut anything else with them. This is why people have special scissors for fabrics. These are not so much special scissors, but basically they are scissors which are never to be used for cutting paper. Cutting only fabric keeps them sharp for a long while.

What all can you get a ceramic coating on?

Anything that is sharp and meant to stay that way is in principle a good candidate for a ceramic coating like the ones they make at Vergason. This goes way beyond your toolshed and into the medical field as well. In addition the ceramic coatings are heat resistant and for want of a better word they "glide" better. You've all seen seamstresses cut through swatches of cloth hardly even moving the scissors? Well a good seamstress would simply love a ceramic coated scissor because it would "glide" through the material with very little friction. Because of these special qualities ceramic coatings are also useful in the injection molding industry.

Not only is it good for cutting through wood, cloth or paper (or MDF) but it is esspecially useful in cutting though tougher materials like metal. Used on drills, saws, taps and a myriad of other instruments it helps prevent damage to the tools and keeps things sharp and easy to work with.