Laser cladding plungers

[Arturas]

Hi everyone,

I am working with fiber laser system now. What I want and working on is to deposit coating on different plungers (diameter from 50 up to 200mm, and length from 500 to 2500mm) using laser cladding instead of using HVOF, FVAF systems, because of their severe working conditions or too thick coating sometimes we have cracks. And it is not acceptable!! Does anyone have experience here? What alternative material to use instead of WC-Co; WC-Co-Cr for laser cladding system? As the mechanical properties of the coating have to be the same.

Best regards

Arturas

[Vig]

Hello, Arturas

AFAIK, LCC Coccola from Finland has some experience laser cladding large plungers.
But as you can find in this article from Kermetico Inc, there is an option to spray quite thick (up to several millimeters) non-porous hard WCCo, WCCoCr coatings without cracking.

Regards

[Vadim Verlotski]

(04-20-2016 10:37 AM)Arturas Wrote:  Hi everyone,

I am working with fiber laser system now. What I want and working on is to deposit coating on different plungers (diameter from 50 up to 200mm, and length from 500 to 2500mm) using laser cladding instead of using HVOF, FVAF systems, because of their severe working conditions or too thick coating sometimes we have cracks. And it is not acceptable!! Does anyone have experience here? What alternative material to use instead of WC-Co; WC-Co-Cr for laser cladding system? As the mechanical properties of the coating have to be the same.

Best regards

Arturas

Hi Arturas,
Powders such as WC-Co or WC-Co-Cr are hardly suitable for laser cladding. For melting You need mixtures of self-fluxing alloys (NiCrBSi) with coarse-grained tungsten carbide. For example, 50% NiCrBSi to 50% WC (50-100 microns).

Regards
Vadim