Development of Slurry Resistant Materials by Laser Cladding

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 - 4:00 PM

Development of Slurry Resistant Materials by Laser Cladding

R. Kovacevic, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX; E. Yarrapareddy, Laser Cladding Services. Ltd., Houston, TX; P. Smith, US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD

SMU’s research team in cooperation with ARL has been developing an advanced manufacturing technology that uses directed energy in the form of photons, electrons, electric arc, and plasma arc to “grow” or “print” metallic components via a process known as direct metal deposition (DMD), near-net-shape, solid free-form or additive manufacturing. The result of this work is the recently developed prototype of multi fabrication (MultiFab) system for rapid manufacturing and repair for which was issued an US Patent No. 7,020,539 on March 28^th, 2006. A number of additive operations based on laser powder cladding, Gas Metal Arc Welding, Gas Tungsten Arc Welding, micro Gas Tungsten Arc Welding and micro-plasma powder cladding, combined with a number of multi-axis subtractive operations (milling, drilling, turning) are performed using a single set-up on a single PC-based, CNC-controlled production platform. The developed laser-based direct metal deposition system is used to synthesize a slurry resistant material.

There is a growing demand for high performance material systems characterized with superior properties in erosion, abrasion, and heat resistance. Recently developed nano-based material systems have shown such superior properties. However, very limited research and development work has been done on studying their behavior in applications that range from drilling tools for oil excavation to medical implants.

Our newest result (Fig. 1) shows that commercially available nickel-tungsten carbide 60 (Ni-Tung 60) reinforced by WC-nano sized particles in the concentration of up to 5% has improved the slurry erosion resistance by about 25% with respect to non-reinforced monolithic Ni-Tung 60. The WC- nano sized particles together with WC-micro sized particles are uniformly distributed throughout the Ni-matrix resulting in an increase of the harder phase surface resistant to erosion and synthesized with the laser-based direct metal deposition process.