“I am continually surprised at how much longer the Alpha coating delays basic sharpening. The attached photos are M4 parts with Alpha coating and they have been in use for over 15 months. My guess is that 15 million parts have been made. They punch thru .057” galvanized steel with a good lubricant. I used to sharpen my uncoated D2 punches every 3 weeks. I have been switching over all die parts from D2 to M4 and then sending for the Alpha coating. When it finally does wear off the M4 immediately shows wear compared to the places the Alpha did not wear off. Those parts are removed – sharpened and sent back to Tincoat and spare coated parts are installed and the die is back in service.

I did have one pair of each (one alpha and one TIN) coated round punches running and the Alpha does have almost no galvanized build-up and the TIN has much more. The machine runs one stroke per second for 8 or 16 hours a day with time down for loading coils and breaks.

To do maintenance, the die has to be removed: 1 hour, I have to separate the die and sharpen punches and re-assemble – the best case would be 2 hrs if only minimum sharpening needed. Die needs about an hour to install and run again. Also, see the reduced chipping of punches. And longer life on the die because the punch stays sharp and therefore less load/wear on the die.

Thanks, Tincoat for reducing my workload and increasing productivity as the dies all run longer without any basic maintenance.” Anonymous Customer

“We ran a full order of 60,000 parts and still don’t need to sharpen. Normally we have to resharpen after 10,000. 6 x more parts than before. The coating far exceeded my expectations.”

It takes 8 hours to remove tools from the press and resharpen them. Saving 6 sharpening saves 48 hours of labor!

Thanks. Don Richardson

“I just want to say that your Alpha™ coating is amazing. Our operators are not very vigilant at removing the abrasive laser dust and slag but still the coating holds up. Some blocks you alpha coated for me over a year ago are still looking great. Never picks up any base metal and even with minimal lubricant, we can wipe 3/8″ thick, grade 80, hot rolled into a tight channel!  It seems to get better with more pressure, after a while it becomes a darker brown and gets even slicker. We used to polish a few times a run. Now, with the Alpha™ coating, we have never had to polish, we use less lubricant and have a better looking product. I will continue to use Alpha™ over any of the competitor’s coatings due to the durability, price, and your turnaround.  Thanks for all your help, you make my job a lot easier!”  Thanks! Chris

Metal Forming and Punching Customer

​“Nearly everything we resharpen gets sent out to Surface Solutions for coatings.  I had one customer that wasn’t using coatings and now that he’s tried it, he wants everything coated.  His tools are working better than new.  It’s like night and day . . .” Tony Deschenes (owner)

Special Tools, Inc.; St. Francis, MN; cutting tool resharpening

“The stainless steel valve balls that were Alpha™ coated are still going strong after 4 months…we used to only get 2-3 weeks out of them.” Missouri customer processing abrasive material

“The Alpha™ coating that was utilized last time for these small parts worked great.  I was very pleased with the result as it greatly increased the part life.  I was able to make 500 passes using the scratch testing equipment and saw no visible degradation of the coating under our microscope (in comparison, the chrome plating showed visible signs of wear after only 100 passes.)” Minnesota customer using Alpha™ on some small probe tips to test abrasive material.

“In a drawing application (stainless steel), the Alpha™ coated tooling only produced 15 parts and the parts were too hot to touch. Putting CrN on the tool resulted in over 500 parts, with the parts being just warm to the touch.” Sheet Metal Forming Customer

“Alpha cutters are amazing! And I hear AlTiN can only get better… Either way, we are going to ship you a huge set to get processed asap… Thank you so much! Kirk is thinking that these cutters just eliminated an entire process to the current one we have to do!!!  We are actually amazed at how much time this is saving on that process. Makes me wonder what else we are doing the hard way..LOL!”

Angela Naasz

CFO, K&C Manufacturing