Recently relocated to Homewood AL and changing its name to Vista Engineering & Consulting, this well established engineering firm specializes in research design, engineering, testing and mechanics of MP-CVD diamond products. With a major area of expertise being R&D into new materials and processes, Vista personnel are proficient in creating new metals, ceramics and coatings products. Vista makes diamond coatings and develops products based on diamond coating technology. The firm starts with a baseline product that is impractical or poorly competitive due to its surface properties. The firm then formulates and applies a diamond coating to the product. Products now being developed for Vista include diamond coated carbide drills for the $500M automotive aluminum drilling market, diamond coated titanium biomedical implants for the $50M TMJ-type implant market and thick films of the $100M radar window market. These diamond coatings help to solve one of the difficult problems in diamond coatings; a smooth coating of diamond that has superior hardness, toughness and smoothness compared with conventional chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond and at a fraction of the price of polycrystalline diamond (PCD). Utilizing its patented microwave plasma, chemical vapor deposition (MP-CVD) process, Vista initially targeted nanostructured diamond coatings for use on cutting tools. Development has since moved ino the areas of thin film windows, smooth coatings for wear surfaces and biomedical devices.
