DIAMOND GRINDING OF THERMAL SPRAY DEPOSITS

Abstract

Today industry needs components of high wear resistant, corrosion resistant and hard facing surfaces. Surface engineering is a technology which deals with these tribological aspects. Thermal spraying as one of the techniques of this surface engineering represents a generic term for a group of coating processes used to apply metallic or non metallic coatings. Thermal spraying is used to modify the surface properties of a substrate. There are many processes as well as process variations. Among them it is extremely important to choose the process for a particular application and evaluate the characteristics of the coatings. This work is concerned with diamond grinding of flame sprayed Ni-Cr powder on stainless steel substrate. Wear resistance is one of the major applications of these coatings. The effect of diamond grinding process parameters on surface roughness of the as-sprayed and heat treated ground surfaces were investigated in this work. Higher grinding forces (normal) were recorded at lower feed rates, while at similar feed rates tangential forces were recorded having low values. Best surface finish was obtained at low feed rates