Influence of process parameters on microstructure of reactive plasma cladding TiC-Fe-Cr coating

A certain amount of Ti was added to the plasma cladding Fe-Cr-C coating in the early stage in order to improve the quality and properties of the coating. Ti-Fe-Cr-C composite powder was prepared by precursor carbonization-composition process. In situ synthesized TiC-Fe-Cr coatings were fabricated on substrate of Q235 steel by plasma cladding process with the composite powder. Microstructures of the coatings with different process parameters, including cladding current, cladding speed, number of overlapping cladding layers, were analyzed by scanning electron microscope. The results show that the structure of the TiC-Fe-Cr coating is greatly affected by the cladding current, the cladding speed and the overlapping cladding process. In this test, when the cladding current of 300 A and the cladding process parameter of the cladding speed of 50 mm/min are clad with three layers, a well-formed and well-structured TiC-Fe-Cr coating can be obtained in this test. TiC-Fe-Cr coating has good wear resistance and good load characteristics under dry sliding wear test conditions.