Today’s advances in the field of technology and various industries have created more specialized needs in the field of component manufacturing. One of these needs is the production of new alloys with unique characteristics, which are important in the production of new industrial parts. Alloys that can help engineers in manufacturing or coating parts. One of these superalloys is Stellite.
Stellite alloys are a range of cobalt-based alloys, with significant proportions of chromium (up to 33%) and tungsten (up to 18%). Some of the alloys also contain nickel or molybdenum. Most of them are fairly high carbon content when compared to carbon steels, though they contain less than 3% iron, and in the stellite alloys the carbon is primarily associated with the chromium to form hard chromium carbide particles which are dispersed in the cobalt-based matrix. Stellite is a family of completely non-magnetic and corrosion-resistant cobalt alloys of various compositions that have been optimised for different uses. The alloy currently most suited for cutting tools, for example, is Stellite 100, because this alloy is quite hard, maintains a good cutting edge at high temperature, and resists hardening and annealing. Other alloys are formulated to maximize combinations of wear resistance, corrosion resistance, or ability to withstand extreme temperatures.
Stellite alloys display outstanding hardness and toughness, and are also usually very resistant to corrosion. Typically, a Stellite part is precisely cast so that only minimal machining is necessary. Due to the very high hardness many alloys of Stellite are primarily machined by grinding, as cutting operations in some alloys cause significant tool wear even with carbide inserts. The alloys also tend to have extremely high melting points due to the cobalt and chromium content. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellite]
