DLC to protect titanium bearing surface?

vanadium

vanadium

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Joined
Apr 5, 2003
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816
It's become common to use steel washers to protect titanium scales from wear due to ball bearings made of harder materials. Has anyone looked into how much protection DLC on the titanium might provide instead? My thinking is it makes the scale surface harder than the balls. Seems like it could be a nice solution if the handle is getting DLC anyway. Thanks all.
 
Has anyone tried to just carbadize (or whatever its called) like what's done for the lockbar? That could be less expensive than dlc. Which would be interesting to experiment with regardless.
 
My experience is that carbidized surfaces are rough. But there's a world of tribological coatings other than DLC which might work, many (most? all?) of which are cheaper.
 
Natlek said:
in will not work , titanium is soft to support thin coat of DLC
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What's the failure mode? Are you saying the DLC will crack as the underlying titanium deforms plastically under compressive load? I don't see that happening under ordinary pivot tension — am I wrong?
 
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Plastic deformation, the same reason anodized aluminum doesn't make a good wear surface for small contact areas. I think if there was more surface area contact, like with pin roller bearings, it would be more likely to work. It isn't that there is so great of pressure on the bearing, but that it's focused into such a small area.
 
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