Institute of Superhard Materials

Laboratory of Additive Technologies

      The department operates the laboratory of “Additive Technologies”, the main task of which is 3D printing of workpieces from metal-ceramic hard alloys or from other related materials for the purposes of instrumental and structural purposes. Research and development of PDS (Printing/Debinding/Sintering) processes are carried out, which include: Thermoplastic 3D printing of hard alloy workpieces filled with hard alloy mixtures of the type WC-Co, WC-Ni or (Ti,W)C-WC-Co, distillation of the binder from the printed workpieces, their normalizing and liquid-phase sintering. For this purpose, work is carried out on the selection of the components of the binding system, optimization of their composition, research of their filling with hard alloy mixtures and determination of rheological properties; manufacturing of filaments from filled thermoplastic mixtures for layer-by-layer 3D printing, testing of printing parameters, testing of distillation and sintering modes.

Accordingly, optimization is carried out using computer modeling of the physical and mechanical properties of filled filaments depending on the type of binder, type of filler and degree of filling, and research of compaction processes during sintering.

Metallographic laboratory

To determine the main parameters of the microstructure and physical and mechanical properties of sintered samples of tungsten-containing composites, there is a Metallographic laboratory.

The main tasks of the laboratory are:

– improvement of methods for metallographic analysis of the structure of hard alloys and tungsten-containing composites;

– research of the processes of structure formation and physical and mechanical characteristics of hard alloys and composite materials, determination of the influence on them of various stages of the technological process of production of sintered powder composites;

– provision of quality assessment of hard alloy products, substantiated expert conclusions and recommendations for improving technological processes for obtaining high-quality hard alloy products;