Investigation of pre-sprayed powders for electric contact welding

Abstract

There are a number of difficulties in the electrical contact welding of powder materials: shedding of powder from the surface of a cylindrical part, impossibility of hardening the layer during welding due to flushing of the powders with coolant and unstable flow of powder into the welding zone. One solution is pre-spraying the powder in some way. (Research purpose). The research purpose is investigating the possibility of electric contact welding of metal powders preliminarily sprayed by a gas-flame method, namely, adhesion strength and losses during preliminary gas-flame spraying of powders. (Materials and methods) Powders of grades PG-NA-01, PrKhIIG4SR, PRZh3.200.28 were sprayed onto flat samples of St3 steel, polished to a roughness of Ra 1.25. The strength of powder adhesion to the base was studied by the cut method. (Results and discussion) The percentage loss of the powder as a whole is 3-23 percent for all the distances studied. The greatest powder losses appear at a distance of more than 180 millimeter from the tip of the burner for powders of grades PG-NA-01 and PrKhIIG4SR. The smallest powder losses were observed for PrZh3.200.28 powder, which totaled 3-7 percent. The maximum adhesion strength of the sprayed powders to the surface was 22.1 megapascals' when spraying the PG-NA-01 powder. The adhesion strength of powders of the grades PrKhIIG4SR and PrZh3.200.28 is small and amounts to 0.2-3 megapascals'. (Conclusions) The use of preliminary flame spraying of powders for their further electric contact welding is possible using PG-NA-01 grade powder, while the best adhesion to the base (that is more than 20 megapascals') is achieved with a spraying distance of 120-140 millimeter. The smallest powder losses during flame spraying are achieved at a spraying distance of 100-160 centimeters', at which the powder loss for the studied grades was 4-12 percent.