Abstract Tungsten carbide-cobalt powder is pressed before sintering into a compacted form using punches and a die cavity. After the powder has been pressed to a specific shape, it is sintered and shrinks a certain amount to a final size. To accommodate this shrinkage, the pressing tools are designed to a certain “shrinkage percentage” and thus the pressed component or compact is larger than the sintered component by that percentage amount. During the pressing process, there is a large amount of friction between the powder being compacted and the die cavity wall. To counter pressing friction, a lubricant is pre-mixed with the tungsten carbide powder. In the past at Powder Industries, the powder was mixed with wax and all of the tools were designed to a 20% shrinkage. In recent times, the wax in the powder has been replaced by PEG (polyethylene glycol) by most manufacturers as this increases the quality of the final product and is easier to remove in the furnaces. As a result of the new PEG lubricant, the tool wear rate at Powder Industries increased and because a higher pressure had been necessary to achieve powder pressing to the same shape and form, often the pressed components exhibited cracks or were not pressed ideally. On account of the problems introduced by PEG, correct tool design for the shrinkage was obtained by a ‘trial & error’ process. This project has been motivated by the need of establishing pressing and/or design ‘rules’ that would do away with trial and error when designing compaction tooling. The project has consisted of investigating the physical properties of 23 grades of WC-Co powder (with or without TiC and TaC) and of performing a series of pressing tests for each grade. A relationship between the apparent density of a powder and the ideal green density of the green compact pressed from the same powder has been found. Using this relationship, an equation has been derived between ideal shrinkage, powder apparent density, component sintered density and powder volatile content. Since the last three parameters are known to the tool designer, this equation can be used to calculate the ideal shrinkage when designing new compaction tooling. This method of calculating shrinkage is now in general use at Powder Industries and many successful sets of compaction tooling have already been manufactured

This work is a preliminary attempt to study the effect between thermal shock and abrasive wear in WC-Co alloys. This was done by evaluating the thermal shock resistance of a WC-12wt%Co mining grade as a function of temperature, number of thermal shock cycles and making comparisons between the abrasive wear responses of samples subjected to thermal shock and samples not subjected to thermal shock. A furnace was designed for the thermal shock treatments. Abrasive wear tests were performed on a 2-body sliding wear apparatus using 80-grit SiC abrasive paper as a counter-face. Stereo and electron microscopy as well as microprobe techniques were used to analyse the effects of thermal shock. It is confirmed that thermal shock has a negative effect on the wear rate of WC-12wt%Co. The results showed an initial high mass loss rate during abrasive wear testing, which increased with increasing temperature and a decrease in wear rate with time until the wear rates converged for all samples. The surface analysis after thermal shock indicated voids on and below the surface, stained surfaces, a thin oxide layer and the possibility of WC decarburization which accelerated the wear response.