Free · vendor-neutral · sources cited
Surface treatment intelligence for the people who run tools.
A working operator's intro to coatings, heat treatment, and surface hardening. Ten short lessons, roughly 49 minutes end to end. No metallurgy degree required. No vendor pitch.
- Lessons
- 10
- Read time
- ~49 min
- Sources
- Cited
Why this exists
The senior toolmaker is about to retire. The new guy doesn't know what TiN is. The vendor rep is the only one who answers the phone.
Most surface-treatment knowledge in tool-and-die operations lives in two places: the head of a senior engineer who's about to retire, or a vendor's sales presentation. Neither is a great place for it.
Coating IQ is a free, vendor-neutral reference for the people who actually run, spec, and handle treated tools. Operators. Junior engineers. Sales reps. Plant managers. Anyone tired of nodding politely when a coating house starts talking.
Every claim cites its source. The course refuses to specify coatings for your application — that requires a real vendor with the application data. What it will do is explain the processes, the tradeoffs, the failure modes, and how to read what your tools are telling you.
The curriculum
Ten lessons. Substrate to surface.
- 014 min
Why surface treating exists
Why tool surfaces and tool interiors need to be different things, and why every shop runs into the hardness-toughness tradeoff.
- 025 min
Heat treating tool steel
Austenitize, quench, temper. What each step does and why skipping the second temper cracks parts in service.
- 035 min
Nitriding
The compound layer, the diffusion zone, and the gas-vs-plasma question. Why a nitrided punch looks different the moment it comes out of the box.
- 044 min
Carburizing and case hardening
Why you don't carburize tool steel, and where you'll actually run into carburized parts in a tool-and-die shop.
- 054 min
Induction hardening
Localized, fast, no atmosphere. The treatment of choice when you need just the end of a punch hard.
- 066 min
PVD coatings
The thin-film hard layer. TiN, CrN, AlTiN, TiCN — what they are, what they're good for, and what those colors actually mean.
- 075 min
Surface prep — the hidden critical step
Two identical punches, two coating houses, very different lives. Why surface prep determines coating performance more than any other variable.
- 085 min
Choosing the right treatment
Failure-mode-driven selection. Why 'PVD or nitride?' is the wrong question and 'what's failing?' is the right one.
- 096 min
Failure modes and how to read them
Spalling, delamination, galling, egg-shell collapse. Reading failure surfaces to find root causes rather than chasing symptoms.
- 105 min
Working with vendors
What to tell a coating house, what to expect back, and the red flags that mean you should walk.
What's next
Four courses, substrate to surface.
The intro you're reading sits on top of three deep dives: nitriding for tool & die, forge die building, and running forge dies on the production floor. 48 lessons total, all live.
See the roadmapTake it offline
Get the PDF
Drop your email and we'll send you the full course as a PDF. Optional: tell us your role and what's giving you trouble so we know what to write next.