Powder steel is formed by mixing very finely ground powders of the required metals, compressing them into a shape, and then heating with a laser, plasma, or another high energy beam to bond them together. It allows for a near-perfect mixture of all the elements to ensure the result is current technologies will allow. Powder steels can be hard, allowing them to take a sharp edge and due to that hardness, hold on to it, meaning longer times between re-sharpening and more use for you.

WHAT IS PLASMA AND LASER CLADDING?

Plasma and laser cladding overcome the shortcomings of traditional surface modification and have been subjected to rapid development in recent years. They are developed based on plasma transferred arc (PTA) and high-power laser systems to provide fast and reliable wear-resistant overlay, indispensable high-tech in the aerospace, aviation, and military fields.

The plasma cladding process is one of the surface treatment techniques, which enjoys enormous potential. The energy of the plasma beam melts both the coating and the bulk material. Plasma cladding can provide coatings, which are thick enough and bonded with the bulk material metallurgically. The technique's characteristics lie in its powder-seeding in synchronism, no previous surface treatments, high efficiency, low cost, and good quality. The plasma cladding's operation principle is that bulk material surface melt and forms a molten pool under the plasma beam's high temperature, which moves according to the set program. The alloy powder or ceramic powder is fed into the plasma beam or the molten pool, the heat-to-melt powder mixed with the molten pool, and some diffusion and chemical reactions. Then, after the plasma beam's shift, the alloy molten pool freezes rapidly and forms the alloy clad coating bonded with bulk material. Plasma cladding shows the advantages of high-quality weld deposit without spatter and minimal porosity. One of the critical characteristics of plasma cladding is the ability to independently control the wire feed and arc energy, thus allowing dilution to be controlled. This process is also stable at low current, which will enable it to be used for precise build-ups. 

Laser Cladding is a weld build-up process and complementing coating technology to thermal spray. The laser beam creates a molten pool at the workpiece surface, simultaneously adding the laser coating material (wire or powder) molten by the laser. The exposure time is short, which creates only a short delay as the cooling is quick. The result is a layer that is connected with the basic material metallurgically. It is tougher than those coatings created by thermal spraying and compared to hard chromium plating. By a powder injection technique, laser cladding has been widely used in industrial applications such as rapid manufacturing, parts repair, surface coating, and innovative alloy development. The capability to mix two or more types of powders and to control the feed rate of each powder flow makes laser cladding a flexible process for fabricating heterogeneous components or functionally graded materials. This technology also allows the material gradient to be designed at a microstructure level because of small, localized fusion and strong mixing motion in the melt pool of laser cladding. Thus, materials can be tailored for a flexible, functional performance in particular applications. 

WHAT IS YOUR ANTI-BACTERIAL TECHNOLOGY?