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H-KOTE™ for Stainless Steel

H-KOTE™ for Stainless SteelH-Kote is a higly decorative, durable, scratch resistant and ultra smooth Titanium Nitride coating for stainless steel mouthpieces that should last a lifetime. It is often used in the medical industry to coat implantable pacemakers, ortho-implants, and tooling like bone reamers because of its biocompatibility.

Houser Mouthpieces is pleased to offer H-Kote as an option on our products as well as Loud Mouthpieces and Sidey SSH mouthpieces. If you have an existing stainless mouthpiece or rim you would like to have coated, please contact us.(Certain stainless alloys must be processed at different temperatures)

H-Kote is a very different process than plating. Stainless mouthpieces are enclosed in a vacuum chamber and heated to 900 deg. F. Titanium targets inside the chamber are vaporized by an electric arc. The resultant vapor is deposited on the stainless with an electric charge forming a high energy bond. The entire process takes about 6 hours. Once cooled, the mouthpieces are lapped to a final finish. The resulting surface is covered with a thin, hard, biochemically inert, micro-lattice ceramic composite.

We are often asked if H-Kote can be applied to a brass mouthpiece. Yes, but it is not recommended. The brass must be chrome plated by a precision chrome plater then H-Koted at a low temperature. Brass unfortunately is a soft metal prone to dents. Chrome is brittle and ultimately will fatique to the point of chipping thus exposing your chops to brass. If the mouthpiece is then to be refinished, removing the exisiting H-Kote and chrome would be difficult if not impossible and damaging to the original surface contours.

We are frequently asked if H-KOTE can be applied to G&W mouthpieces. Yes, however you should check with Giddings and Webster to verify the stainless alloy in your particular model. Processing temperatures vary with the alloy.

H-KOTE™ for Stainless Steel