Abstract
Cemented carbides have been widely used in aerospace, biomedical/wearable sensor, automobile, microelectronic, and other manufacturing industries owing to their superior physical and chemical properties at elevated temperatures. These superior properties, however, make it difficult to process these materials using conventional manufacturing methods. In this article, an overview of the welding and joining processes of cemented carbide and steel is given, followed by a few examples of welding processes. Cemented carbides can be successfully joined by sinter-bonding, brazing and soldering, laser beam welding, tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding, diffusion welding, friction welding, electron-beam welding, and chemical vapor deposition. An overview of the benefits and drawbacks of brazing and soldering of cemented carbide and steel is presented, including reports on joint design, processes, and selection of brazing filler metals. The laser welding of cemented carbide and steel is addressed and reviewed, including reports on gap bridging ability, the inclusion/absence of filler metals, interlayers, and laser/TIG hybrid welding. Finally, a section is devoted to explaining the main issues remaining in the welding and joining of cemented carbide, corresponding solutions, and future work required.
Highlights
Thorsen et al [28] discussed treatments to improve wettability while brazing cemented carbides sintered in hydrogen furnaces with CuAg and oxygen-free high conductivity (OFHC) copper as filler protective argon [29], flame brazing with flux [30,31], and ultrasound-assisted induction brazing with flux [32] and without flux [33]
These findings are helpful for theoretical research on dissimilar cemented carbides and steels
In laser–tungsten inert gas (TIG) hybrid welding, a laser beam interacts in the same molten pool welding torch into one welding process were made in the late 1970s at Imperial College, London by a as the molten pool created by a secondary heat source
Summary
Cemented carbide was patented by Karl Schröter in 1923 [1] as a composite material of a “soft”. The metallographic microstructure of cemented carbides includes tungsten carbide (α-phase), a binder phase (for example, based on Co, Ni, Fe) (β-phase), and a carbide with a cubic lattice (e.g., TiC, TaC), which may contain other carbides (e.g., WC) in solid solution (γ-phase) [6,7,8]. Acid-based etchants, such as Nital (nitric acid and ethanol), dilute hydrofluoric acid (HF), ferric chloride (FeCl3 ) solutions, or acidic mixtures such as aqua regia (mixtures of nitric and hydrochloric acids) are used as additional etchants to attack the binder phase. Cemented carbides are widely used for high-speed cutting, printed circuit board drilling, rolling, and mining (die, rings, rolls, blades, slitters, totors, stators) as hard metal or hard metal–steel composites. The micro drills for printed circuit boards (PCBs), oil gas nozzle fuel pumps, and hydraulic components in jet engines, as well as automotive components (fuel pumps, fuel injectors, compressors, and valve trains), are fabricated from cemented carbides
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