I was reading an article (in the latest American Rifleman, IIRC) about some new pistols by FN. The finish on the slides is done in a vacuum chamber with the metal coating made into a vapor that adheres to the metal surface. Hard, slick totally weatherproof and all that. The selling point was that it is done at normal temperatures so it is not a heat treatment such as the QPQ slat nitriding that works very well on barrels, but not on old Mauser receivers.

Point of question. Is there any outfit out there that one could send a receiver or pistol slide to for this type of coating? I am sure the unit at FNC is already fully scheduled for the foreseeable future....decade...

Thanks,

LD

The problem is these vacuum chambers are quite large and it takes a wee bit of prep to get the parts ready to go into the chamber.
So a one off slide or frame is going to be a challenge to get anyone to to do. unless you want to incur the cost of a one shot run.

These metalizing coatings as they are called are done on a production basis and I'd find it very unlikely that any shop would do a single piece

BTW a company I used to work for sent out 50,000 flash light reflectors at once to be metalized. left a very shiny durable finish but the part had to be sterile clean

Ah, you mean PVD coating? That's pretty common with lathe and milling bits anymore. It really depends on the type of coating you go for as well, as PVD works with various metals to coat the base. There are a number of outfits out there that I'm sure will do it, actually I did talk with a few places willing to do such that are saved on my computer at work, I'll post the links tomorrow.
I'll take a look, did they state the material that they coated with?

Meh...they're doing that "pvd" coating which is just a bake on ceramic from ionbond. Nothing against it, I've heard some good stuff about that. But it's not a true PVD like TiAln, which would look amazing on a handgun.
You could try Eclat coatings? I remember them pretty distinctly as they had reasonable prices, however keep in mind, as mentioned, it's going to be a bit costly and you'll have to wait. The payoff would be that the parts you coated will be very wear resistant. There are variables however. Say...you coat the slide. The slides now going to be at least 70HrC afterwards. I'm not entirely sure if that's going to cause an issue with the now significantly harder slide cause wear on the frame, barrel or other parts now coated, unless you treat all that too. I would assume it would. Just a little food for thought. I know STI has been doing the TiN coating here and there.

Metal smith
What "bake on ceramic coating" are you refering to? None of the coating machines I work on here at the Detroit Ionbond facility would be considered a "bake oven" (but we can make a wicked pizza in a draw box).
On the PVD side, Ionbond's AlTiN is done in the same chambers as their TiN, TiC, TiCN, CrN etc.
PVD, by it's nature takes place at tempratures below the annealing point of steel. CVD on the other hand takes place above the annealing point of steel and requires post processing heat treat.

You might contact NEW GUY. Chris had the barreled action done on his Satterlee and it looks great. I believe Mr. Satterlee had it done for him.
Butch

There are a few wristwatch guys doing PVD to watch cases. They wait to do a few watches at a time. Not sure who does his work.

Jack at IWW

http://internationalwatchworks.com/pvd.html


Rich

Well if it's PVD we are talking about My mistake
I was under the assumption the PVD Tin Tian require an elevated temp. Usually quite hot like 900 Degrees F.
I may be mistaken here.

There is a shop here in sourthern california that does Tian or Talon coating of end mills for us. They are sent out from L&N Industrial supply in poway. Talk to Mike or Larry. The shop they sent stuff out to was reasonable and did small batches

Thanks for the replies. I should have specified Physical Vapor Deposition.

I was mainly interested in it for Mauser receivers that might warp with any high heat process. For pistol slides I will likely stick to parkerizing followed by KG GunKote. Stainless slides do better with Cerakote.

I will follow up these leads.

Many thanks,

LD