Increased life time after VRM welding with XL-CC 880

Problem :

• The life of mill table liners at a cement plant was only 1500-1800 hours. Clients were welding about 1800 to 2000 Kg wire having 18 to 20 mm wear loss every time.
• Hence, plant was required to stop for 3-4 days for weld overlay. This way there were maintaining table liner. The rollers were with ceramic embedded in higher chromium and were lasting more than 1 year.
• The plant was living with this problem for decades and this was the challenge for WRTPL team.

Challenge for WRTPL :

The customer gave the challenge to increase the wear life by at least two times.

Solution :

WRTPL took the challenge and offered than the revolutionary XL-CC880 alloy which is equipped with finer chromium carbides with finer micro structure.

Key characteristics :

• XL-CC 880 is an iron (Fe) based alloy with exceptional high stress abrasion resistance with high toughness, higher volume fraction of carbides and borides, and superior high temperature hardness.
• XL-CC-880 provides exceptional wear resistance through the in situ phase formation of high volume fractions of complex carbides.
• Gives uniquely 68-72 HRC with deposition of single and double pass weld overlay.
• The microstructure is such that the matrix is hardly exposed to wear due to the presence of special ultrafine carbides and there by the matrix wash out is delayed considerably. A multi component steel alloy with unique uniform melt chemistry which allows higher solidification ratio (G/R) to be achieved during welding. This results into uniformly distributed microstructure having lower dilution value.

Key benefits due to increased life time after VRM welding with XL-CC880 : 

• The customer was doing welding every 2 to 2.5 months with 1800 to 2000 kgs. wire for 18 to 20 mm wear.
• With XL-CC880 alloy, the consumption reduced to 450 kgs only with 150 kgs of buffer layer XL-CC-5248M and 300 kgs. XL-CC880.
• The wear life improved to more than 3000 hours & wear was maximum around 10 mm and that too at about 40 mm width on grinding zone only. Other areas wear was maximum 7 mm wear.
• This resulted into reduced power consumption, lower rejects and consistent output from the mill.
• Above case study addresses the concern of top management about reclamation of key spares rather then buying new. This approach is economical and technically superior for the society.
• The solution in terms of repair and reclamation aware society to adapt better metallurgical upgrades and innovative processes to improve the availability of the plant and machinery.
• Overall, this thereby reduces the downtime losses and operational costs resulting into absolute improvement of the bottom line for the organization.