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Hardness and Scratch
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Hardness and Scratch
Hardness can be defined as a material's resistance to permanent deformation. In the coatings industry, hardness measurement can be used to determine the resistance of the coating to scratching from general wear and tear and also if a coating is fully cured.
The term "Hardness" is used to refer to different properties of material, specifically:
Resistance to scratch and wear
Resistance to penetration
Depending on the requirements, there are various methods for testing hardness. Some are dedicated to characterize coatings and others are more suitable for testing bulk materials such as metals, plastics, rubber or elastomers.
Resistance to Scratch and Wear Method:
To assess a coating’s resistance to scratch there are a number of different instruments that can be used:
Pencil Hardness Tester - marking
Sclerometer - scratch
Clemen Apparatus - scratch/indentation
Scratching and Shearing Instrument - scratch
Pendulum Hardness - amplitude
Resistance to Indentation Method:
There are many instruments available to assess the resistance to penetration. For coatings in particular, there are three common methods where the depth of penetration of a weighted tool is used to show the coating’s resistance to penetration:
Buchholz
Barcol
Shore
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Hardness and Scratch Information
Overview
Hardness can be defined as a material's resistance to permanent deformation. In the coatings industry, hardness measurement can be used to determine the resistance of the coating to scratching from general wear and tear and also if a coating is fully cured.
The term "Hardness" is used to refer to different properties of material, specifically:
Resistance to scratch and wear
Resistance to penetration
Depending on the requirements, there are various methods for testing hardness. Some are dedicated to characterize coatings and others are more suitable for testing bulk materials such as metals, plastics, rubber or elastomers.
Resistance to Scratch and Wear Method:
To assess a coating’s resistance to scratch there are a number of different instruments that can be used:
Pencil Hardness Tester - marking
Sclerometer - scratch
Clemen Apparatus - scratch/indentation
Scratching and Shearing Instrument - scratch
Pendulum Hardness - amplitude
Resistance to Indentation Method:
There are many instruments available to assess the resistance to penetration. For coatings in particular, there are three common methods where the depth of penetration of a weighted tool is used to show the coating’s resistance to penetration:
