Wear Behavior of Thermal Spray Coatings on Rotavator Blades

A rotavator is a motorized cultivator, popularly used to decrease the total time and human efforts in soil preparation. However, under dynamic loading, rotavator blades are subjected to extreme abrasive wear. The objective of this study was to enhance the working life of the rotavator blade in order to decrease the idle time required to reinstate the blade periodically during cultivation. The objective was carried out by means of thermal spray coatings, where the effect of the coatings on the extent of wear and the wear characteristics of the rotavator blades were examined. Three different detonation gun sprayed coatings, namely WC-Co-Cr, Cr 3 C 2 NiCr and Stellite-21 were compared in this study on high tensile steel rotavator blades. The wear rates of Cr 3 C 2 NiCr and Stellite-21 coated blades showed significant superiority over the uncoated blade, but not as much as shown by WC-Co-Cr coated blade.