| Abstract | Many industrial tools/equipment require superior surface properties such as high abrasive wear and corrosion resistances as compared to their bulk materials in order to meet harsh operating environments in automotive tooling manufacturing, mining and mineral processing. One strategy is to deposit a layer of hardfacing metal-matrix-composite (MMC) coating onto the working surface of the tool/equipment. This study is to coat Spherotene® spherical fused tungsten carbides (WC) premixed with nickel-based Inconel 625 alloy powders as a binder onto the surface of low carbon steel substrate using a 500W fibre laser which possesses better beam quality, high efficiency, affordable cost, and can easily scale-up, as compared with Nd:YAG and CO2 lasers; the produced coatings free of cracks and pores are expected to offer high surface resistances to abrasive wear as well as corrosion. In this paper, fibre laser cladability, cracking susceptibility, phases and microstructures of spherical fused WC/Inconel 625 coatings are investigated using optical microscopy (OM), scanning electronic microscopy equipped with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM/EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) method. |
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