Adhesion and abrasive wear resistance of TiN deposited on electrical discharge machined WC–Co cemented carbides

Electrical discharge machining (EDM) is a non-traditional machining method extensively used to manufacture complex geometries of hard and brittle materials such as WC–Co cemented carbides (CC). Although the thermal action of the EDM process is known to yield a relatively poor surface integrity in these materials, it may be minimized through the implementation of multi-step sequential EDM and post-EDM surface treatments. Particularly, hard coating application has been demonstrated to be effective for decreasing the EDM-induced mechanical degradation. However, additional studies are required on such coating–EDMed substrate systems to determine other crucial properties in terms of applications, e.g. adhesion and micro-scale wear behaviour. In this work the adhesion strength and the microabrasive wear resistance of TiN deposited on EDMed substrates have been evaluated by means of scratch and crater grinder testing, respectively. The results indicate that both critical load for decohesion of the coating from the substrate and coating specific wear rate increase with finer-executed EDM, reaching values close to those measured for a TiN coating deposited on a ground and polished substrate.