The research group intensively collaborates with Slovene industry. Besides the protection of tools by hard protective coatings, we also cooperate with various partners for solving more advanced technological problems appears at machining of materials. In collaboration with the company Kolektor from Idrija we successfully concluded the project of protection of hard metal saw blades for cutting the commutator bodies (copper + bakelite with fibreglass). The best results were achieved with nanostructured hard coatings, which increased the blade wear resistance several fold. Another problem was successfully solved; the protection of hard metal dies for extrusion of copper profiles, used in production of larger commutators. We found out that the main reason is adhesion wear in the parts, where material flow is most intense. The application of duplex treatment, which included low pressure pulsed plasma nitriding of AISI H11 tool steel dies and PVD TiN/TiAlN multilayer coating, was studied as a possible technology to improve the process of hot forging of steel components. Using such coating the oxidation, adhesion and abrasion wear of hot forging tools was significantly reduced. PVD CrN hard coating was used for protection of dies for extrusion of aluminium materials. We found that such coating significantly reduces aluminium pickup, adhesive wear and thermal fatigue of the die bearing surface. In collaboration with Unitech, Ljubljana, we were testing the coatings for protection of aluminium die casting tools. Protection of tools made by laser sintering is another project with Technological Centre Zasavje. Laser sintering tools protected with PVD hard coatings was tested in ETI Izlake for plastic processing production. In the framework of the project "Replacement of electrochemical coatings with PVD" we successfully replaced the electrochemical metallization of graphite-polymer plates for the new type of commutator developed in Kolektor, Idrija, with ecologically clean PVD technique.