With the ball-cratering test the wear resistance of coatings and surfaces can be measured precisely. An abrasive slurry is drip-fed onto a rotating steel ball which presses against the sample to grind a crater (hemisphere) into the coating. The wear coefficient can be calculated from the volume of the crater. This method is suitable for testing coatings with coating thickness ≥ 1 µm. Abrasion wear reacts very sensitively to changes in the coating composition and structure and can for this reason be used on the production line as a characteristic for evaluating coating quality.