PVD aluminum titanium nitride came back, looks pretty killer… It is the only finish that exists out there that checks off all my high quality control boxes; primarily retaining the heat treat on the notches, extremely high corrosion protection, no tolerance interference, high wear resistance. Shout-out to the guy that put me on this path further back in the thread here.
I have been told by the finisher that salt corrosion is essentially non existent with this finish… but no formal military testing has been done since it is used primarily for hard use tooling.
experienced some minor delays at the machine shop, but this week is full production. Coming soon… (sample pic below that I abused a bit to test the finish… and my canine Apollo)