Italy’s largest coating center uses CemeCon systems!

Lafer SpA is the largest Italian coating center that provides PVD and CVD premium coatings. CemeCon sputter technology has been used for cutting tool coatings for almost a quarter of a century. Due to its market success Lafer extended its job coating production by two more CC800®/9 XL machines.

The job coating market in Italy is highly competitive. Lafer with its location in Piacenza right in the industrial heartland of northern Italy is running the country’s biggest job coating center. Premium coatings for cutting tools are a major part of the business both for servicing the tooling industry and for the recoating of gear cutting tools for which Lafer is operating a reconditioning shop.

CemeCon has supported Lafer from the very beginning with a comprehensive service package. As Andreas Jürgens, head of Technology Transfer at CemeCon explains, this includes a 24h hotline support, yearly visits at the customer’s workshop for checking and calibrating the equipment, permanent process upgrades and lots of training activities. The service department in Würselen has 16 experts for the hardware and the software of the coating equipment and the related peripheral units.

It’s mostly a small change in the cleaning process, the surface preparation of carbide substrates or in selecting the right coating process for the right application that makes the difference. You immediately realize that CemeCon is running its own job coating center.

Primo Civardi, head of the coating production at Lafer

CemeCon operates one of the worldwide biggest job coating productions with more than 40 sputtering machines and diamond systems in Würselen. The experience of handling up to 80.000 cutting tools a day makes it easy to talk to a customer who is engaged in job coating in his language. “We are not just selling equipment, we transfer coating process technology to our customers” adds Dr. Christoph Schiffers, sales manager at CemeCon. Having job coating, machine building and R&D at the same place in Würselen makes it easy to form the right team to give the customer the right information at the right time.

The most recent example of this technology transfer is Lafer’s upgrade to the premium HYPERLOX® coating. HYPERLOX® is an AlTiN with exceptionally high aluminum content. It outperforms conventional TiAlN recipes in terms of hardness and heat resistance. Dry hobbing is a very successful application and dedicated HYPERLOX® recipes allow thick coatings on indexable inserts. CemeCon production experts trained the Lafer staff and supervised the start of production of the new coating products in Italy.

“CemeCon sputtering technology as a unique selling point and the continued support we have received throughout all these years are the foundation of our successful business. That’s why Lafer went for the first CemeCon sputter coating equipment almost a quarter of a century ago and why we recently added two new CC800®/9 XL to our production” concluded Luigi Parenti who is a senior member of the owner’s family of company Lafer.