Improving the Wear Resistance of Moulds for the Injection of Glass Fibre–Reinforced Plastics Using PVD Coatings: A Comparative Study

It is well known that injection of glass fibre–reinforced plastics (GFRP) causes abrasive wear in moulds’ cavities and runners. Physical vapour deposition (PVD) coatings are intensively used to improve the wear resistance of different tools, also being one of the most promising ways to increase the moulds’ lifespan, mainly when used with plastics strongly reinforced with glass fibres. This work compares four different thin, hard coatings obtained using the PVD magnetron sputtering process: TiAlN, TiAlSiN, CrN/TiAlCrSiN and CrN/CrCN/DLC. The first two are monolayer coatings while the last ones are nanostructured and consist of multilayer systems. In order to carry out the corresponding tribological characterization, two different approaches were selected: A laboratorial method, using micro-abrasion wear tests based on a ball-cratering configuration, and an industrial mode, analysing the wear resistance of the coated samples when inserted in a plastic injection mould. As expected, the wear phenomena are not equivalent and the results between micro-abrasion and industrial tests are not similar due to the different means used to promote the abrasion. The best wear resistance performance in the laboratorial wear tests was attained by the TiAlN monolayer coating while the best performance in the industrial wear tests was obtained by the CrN/TiAlCrSiN nanostructured multilayer coating.