Course 01 · Surface Treating Basics
See all courses →Surface Treating Basics
A working operator's intro to coatings, heat treatment, and surface hardening for tool-and-die. Vendor-neutral and source-cited.
- 014 min
Why surface treating exists
Why tool surfaces and tool interiors need to be different things, and why every shop runs into the hardness-toughness tradeoff.
- 025 min
Heat treating tool steel
Austenitize, quench, temper. What each step does and why skipping the second temper cracks parts in service.
- 035 min
Nitriding
The compound layer, the diffusion zone, and the gas-vs-plasma question. Why a nitrided punch looks different the moment it comes out of the box.
- 044 min
Carburizing and case hardening
Why you don't carburize tool steel, and where you'll actually run into carburized parts in a tool-and-die shop.
- 054 min
Induction hardening
Localized, fast, no atmosphere. The treatment of choice when you need just the end of a punch hard.
- 066 min
PVD coatings
The thin-film hard layer. TiN, CrN, AlTiN, TiCN — what they are, what they're good for, and what those colors actually mean.
- 075 min
Surface prep — the hidden critical step
Two identical punches, two coating houses, very different lives. Why surface prep determines coating performance more than any other variable.
- 085 min
Choosing the right treatment
Failure-mode-driven selection. Why 'PVD or nitride?' is the wrong question and 'what's failing?' is the right one.
- 096 min
Failure modes and how to read them
Spalling, delamination, galling, egg-shell collapse. Reading failure surfaces to find root causes rather than chasing symptoms.
- 105 min
Working with vendors
What to tell a coating house, what to expect back, and the red flags that mean you should walk.