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PVD or other treatment to improve the scratch resistance of stainless steel

I am working with a supplier who is providing the housing for electronics appliances. We are requesting them to use stainless as the material of our products. However, the sample provided by the supplier can easily have scratches on it, so would anyone let me know how to improve it? Must all stainless steel be processed by PVD in order to improve the hardness and scratch resistance? We note that the most common color of the stainless steel after PVD is gold, however, we would like to keep the original "stainless steel" color or silver after the PVD, is it possible to have that color after PVD?

Kennis Chan
Project coordinator - Hong Kong
April 28, 2008

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TiN is just one of many hard PVD coatings. A relatively wide variety of colors are possible, including the silver-gray of stainless steel. Check with a PVD service coating company in your area. Jim Treglio - scwineryreview.com PVD Consultant & Wine Lover - San Diego, California April 29, 2008 Yes we will have the same colour as of ss material,if you can deposit CrN +cr on the top of the ss substrate using PVD technic.. if you have any process clarifications to deposit this coating please let me know.will help u. Regards, A.Murali Krishna pvd process engineer Pune, India April 30, 2008