Study of the Processing of a Recycled WC–Co Powder: Can It Compete with Conventional WC–Co Powders?

Cemented carbide tools suffer from many issues due to the use of tungsten and cobalt as raw materials. Indeed, those are listed by the European Commission as “critical raw materials” since 2011 and by the US Department of Interior as “critical minerals” in 2018. To remain competitive with the conven...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of sustainable metallurgy 2021-06, Vol.7 (2), p.448-458
Main Authors: Mégret, Alexandre, Vitry, Véronique, Delaunois, Fabienne
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ball milling
Carbide tools
Cemented carbides
Densification
Earth and Environmental Science
Environment
Fracture toughness
Grain size distribution
Hardness
High speed tool steels
Metallic Materials
Raw materials
Research Article
Sinterability
Sintering (powder metallurgy)
Strategic materials
Sustainable Development
Tungsten carbide
Vacuum sintering
Wet milling
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Summary:Cemented carbide tools suffer from many issues due to the use of tungsten and cobalt as raw materials. Indeed, those are listed by the European Commission as “critical raw materials” since 2011 and by the US Department of Interior as “critical minerals” in 2018. To remain competitive with the conventional high-speed steels, less performant but cheaper, WC–Co tools can be recycled. In the present paper, a WC–7.5Co powder, recycled by the “Coldstream” process, has been sintered with vacuum sintering. As preliminary experiments have shown that the sinterability of the powder is low, the sintering temperature was set at 1500 °C to achieve full density. In parallel, the influence of ball milling conditions (rotation speed and milling medium) on the reactivity of the recycled powder has been studied in terms of grain size distribution, hardness, and fracture toughness. The optimized milling conditions were found to be 6 h wet milling, leading to a hardness of about 1870 HV 30 and a toughness of about 10.5 MPa√m after densification. The recycled powder can thus totally compete with conventional powders, opening avenues for the recycling of cemented carbide tools. Graphical Abstract
ISSN:2199-3823
2199-3831
DOI:10.1007/s40831-021-00346-2