Experimental analysis on hardness of textile steel components with tungsten carbide coatings

Abstract Improvement of tribological property will enhance textile equipment’s efficiency, reliability, and economics and reduce system down time. The metals or alloys are protected against corrosion and wear by applying corrosion and wear resistant thermal spray coatings. EN8 material is an unalloyed medium carbon steel which possess high strength to weight ratio in comparison to that of the normal bright mild steel. In most of the textile industries, the rollers of the machines are made of EN19 material. Thermally sprayed tungsten carbide (WC) is a very successful powder applied to protect metal surfaces against wear and corrosion-erosion in industries. WC has high hardness and fracture toughness and hence it shows good wear resistance. The HVOF coatings, Plasma spray coating and PVD coatings are the techniques used to coat the tube tex rollers. There are various methods to determine the property of coatings and micro hardness measurement is a method to measure hardness and hence to measure the wear resistance. The base materials EN8 and EN19 were coated with tungsten carbide using Plasma Spray coating method. On the coated specimen, hardness tests were conducted. The hardness values are increased due to WC coatings and hardness is better than the HVOF coated samples and much better than the uncoated samples. Novelty of this work is to increase the hardness of the textile rollers to withstand the wear and tear. Hence these coatings will be more useful for increasing the wear resistance and recommended for Textile mill components.