Carbide Materials for Wear Resistance

The Hallmark of Wear Protection

Carbide-containing materials are well-known for their ability to provide wear protection on surfaces for many different applications. Oerlikon Metco offers a wide range of carbide materials for different application processes including:

• Thermal spray
  • HVOF (High Velocity Oxy Fuel) spray for gas-fuel or liquid-fuel processes
  • Combustion powder spray
  • Atmospheric plasma spray

Available Product Forms:

• Powders
• Matrix materials (carbide materials ready to blend with your matrix material)
• Metal cored wires

Surface Protection for Your Specific Wear Needs

We understand wear in all its forms. Let our experts guide you when you need a surface with protection against:

Materials Specialized for Your Service Environment

Tungsten carbide (WC/W₂C) materials, often in a cobalt matrix, offer the best wear protection. For service that requires better corrosion resistance, we recommend a matrix of nickel-cobalt-chromium (NiCoCr), or cobalt-chromium-nickel (CoCrNi).

If your application requires service temperatures above 500 °C (930 °F), we recommend chromium carbide (Cr₃C₂) materials, generally with varying amounts of nickel-chromium matrix. Materials with a higher percentage of matrix produce coatings with better ductility, resulting in improved impact and fretting resistance. Conversely, a lower percentage of matrix offers greater hardness, resulting in better abrasion and wear resistance.

Tungsten titanium carbide (WTiC) can be considered as a possible replacement for tungsten carbide. WTiC is less dense than tungsten carbide fand has unique properties, such as:

• Resistant to dissolution during processing, making it less technique dependent for more reliable, repeatable processing
• Lower density means less weight compared to the same thickness of tungsten carbide, which can be important for weight-restricted and high inertia applications
• Lower cost per unit of weight of material applied compared to tungsten carbide
• Ability to be used in iron-based matrixes for better strength and economics
• Ability to be used in nickel-based superalloy matrixes for higher corrosion resistance compared to conventional carbides

In addition to the carbide types discussed above, ask us about materials designed with our proprietary Scoperta™ rapid alloy development process that form fine, homogeneous exotic carbides during processing that offer overlays with unique surface properties.

Material Optimization Through Manufacturing

The manufacturing processes we use to produce our materials directly affect their service and spray properties. Agglomerated and sintered carbides produce surfaces with better microhardness and coating deposition efficiency compared to fused and crushed carbides. We achieve even higher deposition efficiencies through further powder densification. Through our manufacturing processes, we optimize our carbide materials for various applications and spray processes. We supply many of our product chemistries in different powder sizes to suit specific liquid fuel or gas fuel HVOF spray guns. The right combination of all these optimization procedures ultimately saves you time and money on your production and enhances surface service life. We can produce these products in a wide range of particle size distributions. Consult with our material scientists on your specific application requirements.

We Manufacture the Following Types of Carbide Morphologies:

• Fused tungsten carbides
• Monocrystalline tungsten carbides in a wide range of sizes
• Sintered and crushed carbides
• Spherical (densified) carbides

An Alternative to Hard Chromium Plating

Look through our carbide portfolio for excellent alternatives to hard chromium plating, particularly for landing gears, hydraulic rods, and oil field equipment. The benefits include:

• Faster application, reducing the time component is out of service
• Better tailoring of material to the operating environment
• Coatings can be ground and / or superfinished to very high surface finishes and tight tolerances
• Smooth "as-sprayed" surfaces that are often usable without further machining

Fine Carbides for Non-Machinable Components

For components that are difficult or too costly to machine, we offer very fine carbide materials. They provide very smooth "as-sprayed" surface finishes that require little or no machining. For example, corrugating rolls used in the paper industry need an abrasion resistant surface but have a geometry that would be cost-prohibitive to machine.