Characterization and wear behavior of WC-0.8Co coating on cast steel rolls by electro-spark deposition

To prepare high wear resistance and high hardness coatings, electro-spark deposition was adopted for depositing an electrode of a mixture of 92wt%WC+8wt%Co on a cast steel roll substrate. The coating was characterized by classical X-ray diffractometer (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX). The results indicate that the coating shows nanosized particulate structure and dendritic structure including columnar structure and equiaxed structure. The primary phases of the coating contain Fe₃W₃C, Co₃W₃C, Fe₂C and Si₂W. The coating has a low friction coefficient of 0.13, its average wear-resistance is 3.3 times that of the cast steel roll substrate and the main mechanism is abrasive wear. The maximum microhardness value of the coating is about 1573.9 Hv_0.3. The study reveals that the electro-spark deposition process has the characteristic of better coating quality and the coating has higher wear resistance and hardness.