| Superfine Tungsten Carbide Hardmetals |
Inframat Corporation
is developing a leading edge technology in the area of hardmetals
(tungsten carbide/cobalt and its alloys) that enable exceptional
hardness in end products comprised of these materials without concomitant
loss in fracture toughness. This performance edge is achieved by
an important innovation in the alloying of proprietary grain growth
inhibitors with tungsten carbide powders, both for nanostructured
WC/Co and superfine WC/Co. IMC is now developing industrial scale
pilot plant capability to manufacture and sell these nanoscale and
superfine alloyed powders under the trade names Nanalloy® and
InfralloyTM. These proprietary tungsten carbide powder products
can be sold as is for the thermal sprayed coatings industry or in
bulk consolidated (sintered) form for the cutting tools and related
industries.
Inframat’s
technology is based on a chemical process for the synthesis of WC
and WC/Co powders, in which the individual W, C, and/or Co precursors
are intimately mixed at the molecular level, yielding a uniquely
homogeneous product with exceptional high performance. IMC has developed
exceptionally hard bulk consolidated composite materials, with high
hardness. These sintered materials exhibit unparalleled fracture
toughness at this level of hardness. These materials are compression
sintered in inert gas or vacuum furnaces to form highly homogeneous
monoliths. The hardness of the sintered products is found to be
a function of cobalt content. Typically, cutting tool applications
force the minimum Co content level to be above 6%, below which the
material cannot be sintered. The extraordinary performance properties
of superfine WC/Co include exceptional hardness, erosion and wear
resistance without concomitant loss of ductility or fracture toughness.
For more technical
information click
here
For product
information click
here
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