Iron Carbide - A diamond machinable material?

[nclksr]

Hello,

I am Nicolo, new to the forum and desperate. Here is why:

I am working on diamond machinability within a research project. As you may know, steel is usually considered to be not diamond machinable at all because of chemical mechanisms contributing to tool wear. We have found out that the percentage of dissolved carbon affects the workpiece's diamond machinability. What we are looking for, now, is a ferrous material with the largest possible amount of dissolved carbon (~6.7% ?), which is pure iron carbide/cementite (so I think). Unfortunately, we could not find any cast iron close to cementite.

And now to my question: Is it possible to manufacture stable cementite and it is just not available because there is no industrial application, yet? The only thing I could find out is that there is no applied method for synthesizing Fe3C nanoparticles - which does'nt really help me. Do you now of any pure FeC suppliers?

I am looking forward to hear from you soon
Best regards

Nicolo

 

[cloa]

Why not get use powder metallurgy? Where are you located?

 

[nclksr]

Copenhagen, Denmark.

Using powder metallurgy for what purpose? To get solid iron carbide? Or to skip the diamond machining?

 

[arunmrao]

Why did you not consider complex iron chromium carbides? Also ,if you could please expand on your question with more information, I am sure many would be providing useful tips.

 

[nclksr]

do you mean this kind of material:

http://www.matweb.com/search/DataSheet.aspx?MatGUID=a95c3c42b141408c85295227b5e70cc4

what kind of information do you need? i think my question was pretty clear. is there or is there not something close to iron carbide?

 

[unclesyd]

How about white iron as formed in the production of malleable iron. If my memory serves me well you can get any amount of cementite, up to limits of the composition, you want by varying the composition and cooling rates.

 

[arunmrao]

nclksr,yes I was referring to the abrasion resistant white irons .Your focus is on the caerbide particles and not on the matrix,which is holding together all the carbides? Am I right. Please correct me if my understanding is wrong.

As suggested by cloa,P/M route might offer a solution. It can be reinforced with inputs from Tomwalz,who should be joining these discussions soon, hopefully.

 

[nclksr]

@unclesyd:

i also considered white iron, but i wanted a (ferrous) material with more carbon content. i didn't know that you can decide how much cementite to get. then i just have to find a manufacturer willing to perform a custom cast job for a single specimen as big as my fist...

@arunmrao

yes, i am focusing on the carbide particles, not on the matrix. but i would like to keep it as simple as possible (concerning the material's composition). most of the alloying elements suitable for a hard alloy are not diamond machinable itself (such as chromium for example). therefore, a mostly ferrous matrix seems appropriate. since there is a correlation between the crystal structure of a material and its diamond machinability (fcc=good, bcc=bad), we would like to have a non-ferritic matrix. i am not sure, but i think this means to use either another element as matrix (which we would not like to) or to use nearly pure cementite. please correct me, if i am mistaken. i am sorry for being not very firm within the field of mat.eng.

 

[unclesyd]

One approach might be to get Iron Carbide from American Elements and get someone like Pacific Sintered Metal to make up some PM parts.

http://www.americanelements.com/fec.html

http://www.superweartech.com/