Preparation

• Before the coating takes place the material that is to be coated needs to be thoroughly cleaned. The tools are then placed into the vacuum chamber on special fixtures, which ensure that the coating is applied uniformly. The chamber is set to 10-6 torr -- a high vacuum setting -- and backfilled with an inert gas such as argon which then ionizes the parts. This is known as the gas cleaning stage and it prepares the parts for the metal-coating phase.