And there you have it in a nutshell: DLC coatings 101. You can feel more confident knowing what you’re signing up for when buying a watch with a DLC coating. Do you already have watches with coatings in your collection? Tell me about them and how you’re getting on with them! I’m interested to hear about your experiences.

Well, with some types of PVD coating, this is potentially a legitimate concern. It can and does happen. Over time, the black coating will scratch, and you will see the exposed steel. But, fear not, with the DLC coating, things are a bit different. Thanks to the diamond-like properties of a DLC coating, you don’t have to worry about this happening to your watch. The coating stays put and does not wear off anywhere as quickly as a more conventional PVD-type coating. That’s not to say that you’ll never be able to damage it, so don’t actively try to test this out. It just means that a DLC coating is considerably more protective and hard than other lesser coatings.

DLCcoating thickness

DLCcoating colors

Actually… yes. There are a couple of microbrands who offer watches that have a clear scratch-resistant coating on stainless steel. Off the top of my head, Straton Watches offered such a case… Heroic 18 was another one.

LINQTAPE OCA is a film made out of Optically Clear Adhesive (OCA) backed on a PET substrate. OCA is a double-sided adhesive tape that is matrix-free, meaning it contains no supporting material.

DLC coatedwatch

Estimated refractive indexes show well agreements among almost all Si–DLC coatings, instead of the differences of coating conditions. Generally, the longer coating time or slower coating process makes the higher refractive index in near infrared region. Estimated band gap of a Si–DLC coating was about 1.5 eV. The developed Si–DLC coatings must be useful as not only protective but also decorative coatings.”

Now, you may have also heard concerns about coatings and the truth behind their scratch resistance. While we have established that the DLC coating offers additional resistance to the scuffs and scrapes that everyday life may throw at it. But, what if you really give it some welly and whack it on a brick wall? Will the steel underneath peek out through the open wound? If so, it’d be pretty hard to miss, no?

DLCcoating service

DLCcoating machine

Sinn’s fully tegimented U2’s that are PVD/DLC’d look to be pretty industrious. I think that’s the only brand I would sorta trust if buying a fully DLC’d watch.

But: it`s still a coating! With the soft material behind, mostly 316L, it will come off by scratches, hits and so on. I`d rather use a decent hard steel though, and even 904 is ridiculous…

Key Optical and Physical Properties: Optical Haze: <1 Light Transmittance: >91% Physical Glue: >1500 g/25mm Release Force of Light Release Film: <10 g/25mm Release Force of Heavy Release Film: 25-30 g/25mm Environmental Test Results: Hot and Humid (60°C, 90%RH, 240 Hours): PASS Thermal Shock (40°C~80°C, 30min/cycle, 200 Cycles): PASS High Temperature (80°C, 240 Hours): PASS Low Temperature (-40°C, 240 Hours): PASS Key Features: Excellent optical performance: achieving transmittance of 92% or higher, with haze below 1. Acid-free: material with no corrosion impact on the adherend. Durability: Demonstrates durability without yellowing or bubble formation. Performance in variable conditions: Exhibits excellent performance under high and low-temperature conditions. Price die cutting: Ensures precise die-cutting with no overflow.

“Diamond-like carbon (DLC) is widely used because of its good properties. However, the color of DLC is usually dark brown or black. Recently, we have made fairly transparent Si contained DLC (Si–DLC) coatings in visible light region. The fairly transparent Si–DLC was made by using our original bi-polar pulse type plasma based ion implantation (PBII) system, with recently introduced high slew rate pulse power supply. The colors of metal sample surface were uniformly changed as subdued red, yellow, subdued green and subdued blue or violet, with the change of Si–DLC coating’s thickness. The colors come from the interference between reflected lights at the surface of the Si–DLC coatings and the surface of the metal samples. The colors were also changed with the angle of glancing.

DLCcoating near me

DLCcoating price

Sinn’s fully tegimented U2’s that are PVD/DLC’d look to be pretty industrious. I think that’s the only brand I would sorta trust if buying a fully DLC’d watch.

LINQTAPE OCA has exceptional high visible light transmittance and low resistivity, making OCA film one of the most versatile and high-performance conductive materials available.

Traditionally, watches are made of metal. Sure, there are watches made from non-metal materials, but usually, nine times out of ten, the watches we see are made of some kind of metal. Of those metal watches, the vast majority are made of good old stainless steel. Steel is usually a silvery/metallic color, right? Of course it is! I know that’s a stupidly obvious statement, but bear with me. What happens when brands want to make a watch with the benefits of a metal case but in a non-traditional metal color? Well, that’s where we get into the realms of coatings.

Many different coatings are available to brands, each with its own quirks, benefits, and negatives. Today, I’m looking at one of the most common coatings, which is DLC. Whether you realize it or not, you will most likely have seen a DLC coating on a watch before. Do you know those stealthy, all-black cased watches? The chances are, they use a DLC coating to get that blacker-than-black finish. However, the real question is, “What is a DLC coating, and how does it work?”

We’re actually doing a fair bit of research into this question because while the prevailing wisdom suggested DLC is always dark gray or black, some brands have started offering “Gold DLC”. The emergence of other carbon-based coating technologies could potentially further muddle the answer. We’re going to get a direct response from the brands communicating their recent coatings as Gold DLC to see what the heck is going on there, and then we’ll dive deeper into futuristic coating technologies more next year (we have some interesting, first-hand research projects coming up).

DLCcoating at home

DLC is an abbreviation, so if you’ve been trying in vain to form some kind of weird word out of those three consonants, you can stop. DLC stands for “diamond-like carbon”. As the name suggests, DLC coatings use carbon to achieve a diamond-like layer. Sounds fancy, right? Well, like diamonds, a DLC coating is actually harder than raw steel. In turn, that means that watches with a DLC coating benefit from increased durability and scratch resistance. Despite only being a few microns thick, a DLC coating is pretty badass. By way of reference, a human hair is, on average, 50-70 microns thick. The average DLC coating is around 2-4 microns thick. All that strength and protection in a barely-there layer of… Well, what actually is it?

The coating is formed of vaporized solid materials with a typical PVD process, bound to the watch casing in layers inside a heated vacuum chamber. Depending on the type of material used to coat the watch case, different colors can be achieved, DLC uses carbon as the coating solid, so it only comes in shades of black. Vaporized carbon atoms are blasted onto the watch and cooled down very quickly. So, to attempt to clarify, DLC is a coating applied using a PVD process. Got that? Excellent work — A+.

Watchmaker jargon can be difficult to understand. You read a review about a watch you’re interested in, but there are lots of words being used that don’t make a lot of sense. Sometimes in the watch industry, we forget that people of all experiences are trying to enjoy the same products. We can be a little non-inclusive when it comes to our vocabulary, instead preferring to stick to traditional verbiage rather than layman’s terms. So with that in mind, what is a DLC coating?

Coating yes, but DLC as far as I am aware. For example RZE uses its clear Hex coating on its watches. RZE’s coating is a different PVD coating rather than DLC specifically. As far as I am aware the clear coats will use PVD or CVD as the coating process, but the coating is not DLC.

So I’m yet to find any real conclusive proof of this technique being used for case coating in watchmaking (and I haven’t received a response from the brands I’ve contacted asking them to clarify the term “gold DLC”) but I found this interesting and wanted to share it with the community as part of our ongoing quest for truth:

As we already know, DLC stands for diamond-like carbon, and that’s precisely what it is — carbon. DLC is applied to the watch case using a PVD process. What’s that? Another abbreviation? Don’t you know it! The chances are that you’ve also come across PVD in your journey through the world of watches. To make things more confusing, it’s not uncommon to see the two terms used interchangeably when they are not one and the same. PVD stands for “Physical Vapor Deposition”, and it is not a coating itself. Instead, it is a process of applying a coating.