Optimization And Abrasion Resistance Study Of Fe/Ni Brush Plated Coatings For Remanufacturing

As one of the important technologies of surface engineering in green remanufacturing,brush plating has long been widely used in many fields such as restoring components to theoriginal size and surface strengthening due to its portability, flexibility and easy to operate.Brush plating can be used not only to deposit a number of pure metal, binary and complexalloys, but also to prepare nanostructure metal matrix composites. Moreover, brush platinghas many advantages such as high production efficiency, low initial capital investment, andeasy technology transfer from experiment to industrial application and few shape and sizelimitations, so it is of significant importance to investigate brush plating technology.This paper is technically supported by brush plating and focus on Fe brush platedcoatings and Ni brush plated coatings. The microstructure and properties of Fe/Ni based brushcoatings were examined by X-ray diffraction （XRD）, scanning electron microscope （SEM）,energy spectrometer （EDS）, transmission electron microscope （TEM）, X-ray photoelectronspectrometer （XPS）, differential thermal analysis （DTA） and other modern analysis and testtechnologies. The influence of rare earth elements on the surface morphology, microstructureand properties of Ni based coatings has been highly emphasized and the influence mechanismhas been discussed. At the same time, reasonable selection of alloying element to prepare pureFe brush plated coatings, binary Fe-W brush plated coatings and ternary Fe-W-Cu/Mo brushplated coatings on account of the bottleneck problems existed in the Fe brush plated coatingspreparation and service process, as well as the brush plating techniques, function mechanismsof elements were studied, the microstructure and properties transmutation characteristics of Febrush plated coatings via heat treatment have been investigated.The results indicated that adding a proper amount of rare earth was beneficial to bothhardness and abrasion performance as well as the structure of Ni brush plated coatings. Thechief strengthening mechanism of rare earth element was grain refining. While W, as a co-deposition element with Fe, was added, the brush plated coatings would perform well inhardness and brush plated coatings cracking resistance but with poor compactness and badabrasion resistance. A further addition of Cu, an element featuring in lubrication and excellentplastic flow ability, was revealed to refine organization and to enhance the wear resistance ofthe brush plated coatings remarkably. Fe₃C showed up in all Fe based brush plated coatings when heat treated and the grain grew up with the rise of temperature. Secondary hardeningwas observed in Pure Fe brush plated coatings and Fe-W brush plated coatings during a rangetemperature from451to651℃. Brush plating on non-conductive epoxy matrix compositessubstrate could be realized by both chemical plating and covered with conductive organiccoatings. Brush plated coatings prepared based on chemical plating was recorded to be ofdense structure, good interfacial integrates with matrix, and hardness reaching to558HV,which could meet the demands of engineering applications. When titanium alloy waspretreated with the mixture of HF and acetic acid, the prepared pure Ni brush plated coatingsintegrated well with the matrix and the titanium alloy surface abrasion resistance was notablyimproved.