An auto-brazing of composite material rod with small diameter

This study proposes an automatic brazing mechanism for manufacturing a composite material rod made of tungsten carbide and stainless steel. The stainless steel of this study is Cr type, and filler metal is Ag–Cu–Zn based filler metal. The processes involved at various working stations are programmed using sequential function charts. Experiments are conducted to examine the brazing result and the efficiency of the proposed auto-brazing mechanism for large-scale production. The cross section of the brazed specimen was examined using the field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) with the energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS). Results have shown that there is no crack or bubble in brazing interface according to the SEM observation and the composite material rod can be employed for manufacturing micro-drills and micro-cutting tools and the automatic mechanism proposed in this study can enhance the production of micro-cutting tools at high quality, lower cost and shorter time.