Effects of lower cobalt binder concentrations in sintering of tungsten carbide

Cemented tungsten carbides have received much attention because of their superior characteristics. Traditional cemented tungsten carbides usually contain 3–30 wt% binder phase. In this paper, WC with low Co concentration less than 3 wt% is studied using traditional powder metallurgy. The binder phase has tremendous effect on sinterability of WC. High sinterability and high hardness can be achieved for the WC (0.7 μm) with 0.5 wt% Co. Abnormal grain growth (AGG) is often observed in sintering WC with small amount of Co. It seems that AGG is affected by the concentration of Co and a range of Co concentrations may exist for the large amount of AGG. To control the grain size, VC is added to inhibit the grain growth of WC. It is observed that the hardness is affected by the amount of addition of VC. Controlling the ratio of C/W less than unity at low Co concentrations will result in the production of W2C phase. The hardness of WC–Co is affected by the amount of W2C phase in the sample and W2C is stable during the normal cooling process.