Comparative behaviour of cobalt and iron base hardfacing alloys

This paper aims to compare the behaviour of cobalt and iron base hardfacing alloys on hot forging dies under temper, shock and wear. Tempering resistance, shocking behaviour and wear resistance were investigated using a tubular furnace, press and pin on disc tribometer respectively. The results showed that the thermal stability of commercial iron base hardfacing alloy (named RMD248) is good below 550°C but poor in the case of higher temperature, whereas the cobalt base hardfacing alloy presents superior tempering resistance. The cobalt base hardfacing alloy possesses excellent shock hardening properties at all the experimental temperatures, but RMD248 does not, especially at high temperature (600°C). Compared with the hardfacing layer produced by RMD248, the cobalt base hardfacing layer produces high wear resistance at 600°C and high temperature oxidation resistance at 600°C for 100 h.