Electroplated Cr is of limited durability when used in corrosive environments. Furthermore high gloss electroplated Cr is associated with high costs due to mechanical polishing and environmental issues.

After years of development, the new, world-wide patented SLC - process solved all these issues. This unique technology is a combination of powder paint techniques with an ion-assisted metallizing pvd-process.

The SLC - coating is a multilayer coating, where a pvd (physical vapor deposition) - metal layer is deposited sandwichlike in between 2 polymer powder coats.

The paper describes the applications of the SLC - coating to automotive wheels. Tests with SLC - coated wheels showed an unsurpassed corrosion and wear resistanc in: 1) the 240 h CASS - test, 2) the 1000 h salt spray test, 3) the gravel erosion test and 4) 1000 car washes simulation etc.

Meanwhile close to 500.000 SLC - coated steel and Al-alloy wheels are on the road in Europe and the United States

Coating equipment, process details, coating properties as well s other applications are reported.

Decorative PVD coatings have been developed to replace the traditional gold plating used for "high-value" watch industry and jewellery, whose minimum gold thickness was 10 micrometres.

According to the price of gold in the late 70's and in the early 80's, a number of companies, active in the watch industry or specialised in PVD surface coatings have worked and tried to replace gold plating by a TiN yellow PVD coating.

Preci-Coat was the first company worldwide to succeed and to industrialise the yellow PVD coating for these "high-value" decorative applications. Various other colours, in addition to the yellow colour, have been developed, such as black, blue, etc.

Because of the high price of the final product, a very high performance of the PVD coating is required. Preci-Coat has succeeded in mastering this aspect by improving the different deposition parameters of PVD treatments by sputtering and also by the combination of PVD and electroplating.

Some examples of coloured coatings are presented considering their advantages and drawbacks as well as their chemical and mechanical behaviour towards external strains.

One characteristic of an effective decorative coating is its ability to resist corrosion and tarnishing in both normal and aggressive environments. To date most laboratory characterization of decorative coatings has been limited to qualitative assessments after chamber testing (e.g. neutral or copper-acid salt spray) or direct exposure to chemicals of interest. Field testing of decorative coatings is often performed, however this technique is costly and time consuming.

To address the need for a quicker more reliable characterization technique we have utilized electrochemical potentiostatic and potentiodynamic analysis. Thin decorative coatings of ZrN, ZrTiN, and Cr were deposited by cathodic arc evaporation on plated brass and stainless steel. These coatings were subsequently analyzed in several acidic and basic electroytes to determine corrosion behavior. In some cases there was a direct correlation of the electrochemical data with chamber and field testing results.