The term “Hardness” is used to refer to different properties of material, specifically:
- Resistance to scratch and wear
- Resistance to penetration
Depending on the requirements, there are various methods for testing hardness. Some are dedicated to characterise coatings and others are more suitable for testing bulk materials such as metals, plastics, rubber or elastomers.
The pencil hardness test is perhaps the most simple form of hardness test....
A range of products designed to allow the user to measure a coating...
A range of simple tools designed for sample preparation in advance of...
By measuring indentation the hardness of a coating can be established.
Resistance to Scratch and Wear Method:
To assess a coating’s resistance to scratch there are a number of different instruments that can be used:
- Pencil Hardness Tester - marking
- Sclerometer - scratch
- Clemen Apparatus - scratch/indentation
- Scratching and Shearing Instrument - scratch
- Pendulum Hardness - amplitude
Resistance to Indentation Method:
There are many instruments available to assess the resistance to penetration. For coatings in particular, there are three common methods where the depth of penetration of a weighted tool is used to show the coating’s resistance to penetration:
Laboratory 
