MECHANICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF STEEL COATED WITH WC FOR TEXTILE APPLICATIONS

Textile industry is a fast growing industry and innovation is the need of the hour in it. Modern day textile industry is highly mechanised and involves huge machines for increased production. One such machine is the Tube Tex machine, which is used for compacting the fabric. It has huge rollers between which the fabric is passes and all wrinkles are removed in the process. Since the rollers are subjected to continuous friction and high temperature when compared to the room conditions, the rollers undergo a lot of wear and tear. The aim of the present work is to reduce the wear and tear of the rollers by coating them with tungsten carbide using Plasma spray coating technique. Different coating thickness was considered for the study. The stand-off distance of the spray gun was also varied. Different combinations of coating thickness and stand-off distance were considered and Vicker's hardness test was used to determine the hardness of the coated specimen. It was observed that at 150 micron coating of Tungsten Carbide over the substrate material, EN 8 the hardness value was high. It was also observed that at stand-off distance of 5 inch the coating yielded better results irrespective of its thickness. As part of the study the XRD and SEM analyses were also done to ensure that the coating was uniform, homogeneous and without any defect.