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

Abstract Cemented carbide tools suffer from many issues due to the use of tungsten and cobalt as raw materials. Indeed, those are listed by European Commission “critical materials” since 2011 US Department Interior minerals” in 2018. To remain competitive with conventional high-speed steels, less performant but cheaper, WC–Co can be recycled. In present paper, a WC–7.5Co powder, recycled “Coldstream” process, has been sintered vacuum sintering. As preliminary experiments have shown that sinterability powder is low, sintering temperature was set at 1500 °C achieve full density. parallel, influence ball milling conditions (rotation speed medium) on reactivity studied terms grain size distribution, hardness, fracture toughness. The optimized were found 6 h wet milling, leading hardness about 1870 HV 30 toughness 10.5 MPa√m after densification. thus totally compete powders, opening avenues for recycling cemented tools. Graphical