A New Technology for Strengthening Surface of Forging Die

The Electro-thermal Explosion Coating (EEC) technique is a new surface treatment technology emerged in recent years. It uses an electrical discharge (with very high voltage from 5 to 30 kV or more) to produce a pulse current with large density inside the material to be deposited, the metal wire undergo the heating, melting, vaporization, ionization and explosion processes in a very short time (from tens ns to several hundreds ${\mu}s$), and the melted droplets shoot at the substrate with a very high velocity (3000 - 4500 m/s), so that the coating materials can be deposited on the surface of the substrate. Coatings with nano-size grains or ultra- fine grains can be formed because of rapid solidification (cooling rate up to $10^6-10^9\;k/s$). Surface of the substrate (about $1-5{\mu}m$ in depth) can be melted rapidly and coatings with very high bonding strength can be obtained.