IMPROVEMENT OF WEAR COMPONENT'S PERFORMANCE BY UTILIZING ADVANCED MATERIALS AND NEW MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGIES: CASTCON PROCESS FOR MINING APPLICATIONS

The project continued in this reporting period with focus on three issues: (1) failure analysis of the FM inserts tested in the field, (2) continued study of confinement burn-out, and (3) disc cutter manufacturing. The failure analysis concludes that the main reason causing early failure of FM inserts is its low hardness, or in the other words, the FM inserts contained too much cobalt. The recipe to make the FM material needs to be changed. The continued binder burn-out experiments showed that FM confinement burn-out in a metal container filled with sand is an effective way to remove the organic binder in the inserts without causing bloating and delamination. Three 6.5 inch disc cutter sections were successfully produced. They were made of H13 powder with a green FM insert, a hot pressed FM insert, and a pre-sintered traditional WC insert respectively. One 17 inch disc cutter section was also produced from H13 powder with a pre-sintered traditional WC insert. It is planned to test the heat treatment effect on the H13 and WC bonding and manufacture full 6.5 inch disc cutters in the next quarter