Corpus Christi Army Depot ion implanter: Capabilities and capacities for industrial applications

The features and initial results obtained from using a large-scale production, non-mass-analyzed ion implanter installed at the Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD) in September 1994 will be discussed, The ISC-5000 ion implanter (Implant Sciences Corporation, Wakefield, MA) is the largest non-semiconductor implanter in the USA. This machine has been devoted to the treatment of cutting tools and other critical components of interest to the US Army. The ion implanter is a fully automated user-friendly machine. Its large-diameter (0.762 m) target platen allows the simultaneous processing of up to 500 tooling inserts of various shapes and sizes in one batch, The following types of cutting tool and material have been ion implanted with nitrogen: (1) both TiN coated and uncoated cutting tools of WC (Co) and high speed steel, which include cutting tools such as inserts, reamers, end mills and taps, and (2) Cr-plated specimens of copper-based material. The coated WC cutting tools were tested for the machining of high nickel alloys and show an average of 30% tool life improvement over non-ion-implanted TiN inserts. This performance improvement in conjunction with the large tool-volume-processing capacity make the CCAD machine economical to operate and have provided actual hardware demonstrations of the benefits of the ion implantation process.