CHARACTERIZATION OF WC-Co THERMAL SPRAY COATINGS BASED ON THE COMPOSITE POWDERS

The article gives an overview of methods suitable for describing WC-Co powder granules and coatings for thermal spray powder development and production. Composite powder particles and microstructure grains vary from a few nanometres to hundreds of micrometers. It is therefore necessary to combine different analysis methods. In the granule and particle size analysis, laser diffraction, sieve analysis, image analysis and the BET method were used. To describe the microstructure and porosity of the thermal spray coating and composite powder granules, computer analysis was used. As a result, a good numeric database was obtained that enables us to compare the characteristics of the coating with new experimental coatings and to analyze the resistance of the coating to the abrasive wear.