Production of high-property Cr3C2-based cermet with Cr3C2-10WC composite powder as starting material

In this paper, a kind of cermet with the composition 80(Cr3C2-10WC)-20Ni was prepared by low pressure sintering technology using self-made Cr3C2-WC composite powder as raw material. It has an highly dense and fine-grain microstructure, resulting in greater performance: bending strength of 1158 MPa, hardness of 87.2 HRA and fracture toughness of 10.6 MPa m1/2. Compared with 80Cr3C2-20Ni cermet without adding WC powder, the bending strength, hardness and fracture toughness of 80(Cr3C2-10WC)-20Ni cermet increase by 124.4%, 3.1%,65.6%, respectively. The improvement in the mechanical properties of the 80(Cr3C2-10WC)-20Ni cermet is mainly due to the existence of (Cr,W)3C2 solid solution phase in Cr3C2-10WC powder, because W atoms can be evenly distributed in Cr3C2-WC composite powder to form (Cr,W)3C2 solid solution phase, and effectively improve the sintering dissolution and precipitation process, and thus eliminate coarse hard phase grains and pore defects of cermets.