Tailored Sintering of WC-Co Cemented Carbides by Spark Plasma Sintering

摘要

Nanometer sized WC-Co starting powders were consolidated by spark plasma sintering (SPS). The pure WC-12 wt% Co grade and with 0.9 wt% VC addition were sintered for 2 min at 1240℃ under a maximum pressure of 60 MPa. The radial temperature gradient inside the sintering powder compacts can be controlled using different tool set-ups, which was confirmed by finite-element simulations. The results revealed that both a graded and a homogeneous hardness profile can be obtained along the samples radius in sintered WC-Co materials by controlling the powder compositions and the thermal gradient.