experiments as explained above another important coating property in high speed or high feed cutting applications and in machining of austenitic stainless steels and titanium and nickel alloys is the resistance of a coating to oxidation at high temperatures and the characteristics of the third body layer that forms between coating and workpiece material during cutting that can influence the chip formation process to investigate the oxidation behavior of the alloyed alcrn coatings annealing experiments in flowing air during one hour at 900 u00b0 c were carried out these experiments were followed by secondary ion mass spectrometer depth profile analysis of the oxidized surface layers fig6 a illustrates the depth profile for a typical oxidation behavior of a standard alcrn coating with the formation of both chromium and aluminum oxides this typical behavior was exhibited not only by the unalloyed alcrn coating but by the alcrtin coating as well nevertheless some of the alloyed alcrxn coatings had a tendency to form mostly chromium oxides as it can be inferred from fig6 b this indicates a poor oxidation resistance behavior since chromium oxides are generally weaker and less resistant to corrosion than aluminum oxides and therefore they can be easily removed during cutting and or molding processes.