Wet Milling Effects for Cemented Carbide Mixtures

The purpose of wet milling is to mill the tungsten carbide powder to the desired particle size, to achieve sufficient and uniform mixing with cobalt powder within a certain proportion, and to have good pressing and sintering properties. This wet milling process mainly adopts the tungsten carbide ball and alcohol rolling method.

What are the wet milling effects for tungsten carbide mixtures?

1. Mixing

There are various components in the mixture, and the density and particle size of each component is also different. In order to obtain high-quality cemented carbide products, wet milling can ensure that the components of the mixture must be evenly distributed.

2. Crushing 

The particle size specifications of the raw materials used in the mixture are different, especially the WC which has an agglomerate structure. In addition, due to the actual needs of performance and production, WC of different grades and particle sizes is often mixed. These two aspects lead to a large difference in the particle size of raw materials, which is not conducive to the high-quality production of alloys. Wet grinding can play the role of material crushing and particle size homogenization.

3. Oxygenation

The collision and friction between the mixture, the milling roller, and the milling balls are more prone to oxidation. In addition, the water in the milling medium alcohol also enhances the oxygenation effect. There are two ways to prevent oxygenation: one is cooling, generally by adding a cooling water jacket outside the barrel of the ball mill to maintain the temperature during the operation of the ball mill; the other is to choose a suitable production process, such as organic farming agent and raw materials ball mill together because the organic forming agents form a protective film on the surface of the raw material, which has the effect of isolating oxygen.

4. Activation

In the process of ball milling, due to collision and friction, the crystal lattice of the powder is easily distorted and distorted, and the internal energy increases. This activation is beneficial to sintering shrinkage and densification, but it is also easy to cause "cracked", then uneven growth during sintering.

In order to reduce the activation effect, the wet milling should not be too long. And choose the appropriate wet milling time according to the particle size of the mixture.

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