Wear leads to huge material and energy losses in industry: wear and wear-related failures cause 3% of the world’s total energy consumption by remanufacture of worn parts and spare equipment. Wear resistant coatings, so called hard metal coatings, such as tungsten carbide composite (WC-Co) coatings, have been utilized successfully to enhance lifetime of components and that way increase productivity. However, continuously increasing efficiency demands in production set even higher requirements and need for better materials.
WEAREND project satisfies that need by by novel and hard-to-copy material solution which is based on at VTT developed and patented material approach on processing of nano-carbide WC-Co powders for wear-resistant coatings. During WEAREND2 project, this approach, the powder production and the coating technology processes will be up scaled and validated with industrial partners. Project targets that after upscaling coated products have superior performance characteristics, particularly regarding the increased lifetime and better surface quality compared to current state of art for hard facing solutions.
The commercialization potential is high as wear resistant materials, wear resistant coatings and the tool markets are huge. The components with extended lifetime also save valuable natural resources by reducing the critical raw materials consumption and decrease use of hard-chromium coatings, in which toxic and environmentally unsafe chemicals are used.
