Coating refers to the application of an extremely thin layer of material onto the surface of components that need to be protected from corrosion and other kinds of damage like scratches.
The most common coating materials are titanium, aluminum, and gold normally used to give the watch an extra finish, and an additional color to the stainless steel case.
The name of the coating process in the watch industry is called PVD, which stands for “Physical Vapor Deposition”, and it is not a coating itself. Instead, it is a process of applying a coating.
Both DLC and IP Plating are a coating applied using a PVD process.
Today, the most common of the PVD processes is DLC that stands for “diamond-like carbon.” As the name suggests, DLC coatings use carbon to achieve a diamond-like layer. That means that products with a DLC coating benefit from increased durability and scratch resistance. Despite only being a few microns thick.
Microns is the unit used to measure the thickness of the layer applied using any PVD process.
At Vaer, we use the IP process that stands for "Ion Plating," which is another PVD process, to coat our watches specially in a matte-black finish. IP is a modern plating method commonly used in the watch and jewelry trade where a durable and hardwearing finish is applied to products made from metals such as stainless-steel.
Ion plating is used to deposit hard coatings of compound materials on tools, adherent metal coatings, optical coatings with high densities, and conformal coatings on complex surfaces.
Below you will see the measurements of the thickness layers applied to our products in microns.
Dive Case:
- IP-Black Plating (0.5 mic thickness)
Field and Chrono Case:
- IP-Black Plating (1 mic thickness) + DLC (300HV)
Metal Band:
- Previous Bands: IPBlack Plating (0.5 mic)
- Current Bands: IPBlack Plating (1 mic) + DLC (300 HV)
IMPORTANT! - The PVD will protect the watch from scratches, scuffs and rust but does not make the watch shock-resistant.
