Surface Coating of Tungsten Carbide by Electric Exploding of Contact.

Electric exploding of a tungsten carbide-cobalt material near-by high-speed steel surface forms on it a hardening coating. The essential structure properties of the formed coatings are determined by parameters of contact exploding electrode at the pulse current amplitude from above 106 A/cm2 and duration less than 10-4 s. The metallographic investigations of coating structures were done by microscope 'Neophot-24'. They have shown that the contact electric exploding caused the transfer of tungsten carbide and cobalt on the surface of high-speed steel. The breakdown of tungsten carbide-cobalt material took place during electrical exploding. The hardening layers of tungsten carbide and pure nanocrystalline tungsten have been formed upon the surface of high-speed steel as a result of electric exploding. Crystalline grains of tungsten have an almost spherical form and their characteristic size less than 400 nanometers. Micro hardness of the coating layers and high-speed steel structures was measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]