Titanium metallurgy?

[Ben Potter]

Will titanium wet silicon carbide  (or aluminum oxide) when it is melted?

 

Titanium melt point: 3034 F

Silicon carbide melt point: 4946 F

 

Take powdered titanium and mix evenly with powdered silicon carbide heat to ~3500F vacuum cast to shape, final shaping with diamond tooling.

 

My question is will the titanium wet (stick to) the silicon carbide making a tough but very abrasion resistant matrix or will it not stick making an expensive crumbly mess?

Aluminum oxide is another option but the melting point is only ~700F from the Titanium.

Way over my head on this one.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Ben Potter
to add aluminum oxide to question

[Aiden CC]

I believe that would be a type of metal matrix composite, you could look into that area.In my experience, surface energy/wetting properties for odd combinations can be hard to find, it might be easiest to look for a Ti MMC that exists to get an idea of what would work. Looking into it quickly, it seems like SiC might work?

 

That being said, it looks like the processes used to do this are fairly involved, and "expensive crumbly mess" might be the primary outcome of trying to do this.

[Ben Potter]

It's called cermet for CERamic METal.

Turns out you can make it in a microwave with argon if you use alumina and titanium. It is used for metal cutting circular saw blades.

 

[Jerrod Miller]

I have poured a fair few steel castings with SiC tiles in them.  We (people far more advanced than I) found that it worked far better to Ni plate (very thick) the SiC tiles before casting the steel.  This was for total encapsulation of fairly good sized tiles (1"-10" thick).  This was not for a wear application.  We did a lot of experiments with smaller pellets, grit, and spheres in various ceramics.  

 

17 hours ago, Ben Potter said:

Titanium melt point: 3034 F

Silicon carbide melt point: 4946 F

 

Take powdered titanium and mix evenly with powdered silicon carbide heat to ~3500F vacuum cast to shape, final shaping with diamond tooling.

 

This isn't going to work like that.  For starters, you are not likely to use pure Ti (you wouldn't want to).  That means your melting temperature is going to go down some.  So at 3500F you are going to be all liquid (even if you used pure Ti) and your SiC is going to float as it is less dense than Ti.  I have had ceramic come floating up out of the sprue when the retention system (stainless steel cage) failed.  Depending on your mold geometry this could mean that you have a lot of SiC particles along the top (cope) surface

 

That being said, I have worked in foundries for the last 10 years specializing in wear-resistant steels and chrome irons.  The as-cast chrome irons we specialize in are about 35-40% carbide (by volume) in the as-cast state, and will generally precipitate out 5-10% more during heat treat.  These are highly used in agricultural, rock crushing, shot/sand blasting, cement plants, and other such applications.  Sometimes more ceramic grit (alumina, titania, and zirconia are most typical) is added to the mold prior to pouring for even more wear resistance.  It is not especially easy.  These alloys are pretty good at taking impact and having good wear life; and they are fairly cheap.  

[Ben Potter]

Thanks for all the replies. After spending the better part of the day in research I think what I'm looking for is powder metallurgy with a high temp sintering.

 

I still dream of a sea water safe sailing knife...