What Is TiN Coating and What Is It Used For?

When you purchase a tool for working or drilling metal, such as a drill bit, you always look for the best solution. The most performant one. That's why you often hear about drill bits with TiN coating, titanium nitride.

We immediately recognize these tools for making precise holes in various conditions. Because they have the classic golden color that allows you to immediately understand that you're about to use a treated metal type that will hardly disappoint you. Do you want to discover why? Here's what it means to have a metal working tool that has undergone treatment with the famous TiN coating.

Titanium Nitride, Technical Definition

To understand the centrality of the TiN treatment, we must delve deeper into the starting point: titanium nitride. Why is this binary compound so important? Simple, it's a ceramic material composed of titanium and nitrogen used for different purposes.

Among these we also have hardening cutting surfaces. To deposit the TiN layer on various objects – like drill bits or end mills – different techniques can be used, such as physical vapor deposition or chemical. The first, however, is preferred for working steel pieces because the temperature reached is lower than the austenitization temperature, a sort of crystallization.

What, Then, is TiN Treatment?

As mentioned, titanium nitride is a hard and heat-resistant chemical compound. That's why it's often used to coat the surfaces of tools, mechanical components, and other objects that must be exposed to extreme conditions.

This step, known as TiN treatment, has one objective: to improve the properties of the base material. In fact, titanium nitride has an indispensable characteristic.

Namely, it is harder than steel and not just a little.

This allows for greater resistance to abrasion and wear, which means increasing the lifespan of tools that shouldn't be replaced frequently. A nice advantage for anyone working with these tools.

The Advantages of This TiN Coating

Beyond a decisive increase in resistance, which allows you to save on tool replacement, and a maintenance of quality standards of the blade to always obtain excellent results, TiN advantages include other substantial points.

This specific coating also has anti-corrosion characteristics and great thermal stability, maintaining its resistance at high temperatures. That's why it's so important, in some cases, to have drill bits coated with titanium nitride.

Why Use TiN Drill Bits?

The advantages are those you can find in bits for drilling hard metal: thanks to a yellow-colored coating that reaches 5 microns, you can work on very hard surfaces and not compromise the drilling effectiveness, thanks to anti-friction properties and hardness.

When you need to work with particularly demanding steels and metal alloys, or perform jobs that require high precision, the use of HSS steel drill bits with TiN coating. It should be remembered that this treatment is not aimed only at reamers, lathes, taps and dies, drill bits, blades and end mills that must resist deformations and high temperatures: surgical instruments are often coated with TiN thanks to its anti-corrosion property and high biocompatibility.

On the other hand, we deal with something else. And we must remember that drill bits treated with titanium nitride are one of the ideal solutions for those who work every day with the hardest metals. Not to forget that this solution is also suitable for light alloys, plastic, and wood. Especially if you follow the standards of Krino drill bits:

The single-layer TiN coating is designed to increase resistance to wear and oxidation phenomena to which tools are subjected during drilling operations: it has excellent microhardness characteristics (HV 0.05 2300), a low coefficient of friction (0.4), a maximum operating temperature of 500°C.

Furthermore, the coating of just a few μm, deposited by physical means through vapor (Physical Vapour Deposition), allows for increasing the life of cutting tools, also improving surface finish and the sliding of working chips. Remember that for some more demanding jobs, there is the TiAl coating, titanium and aluminum.