Boriding of the heat treated Inconel 718 alloy

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Boriding is an effective method to create hard wear resistant nickel boride surface layers on nickel alloys, such as Inconel 718. These layers have the advantage of being quite deep and very resistant to failure during scratching and repeated loading. Boriding is a diffusion based process that involves rather complex chemical reactions and the primary challenges in its effective application to heat treated nickel alloys is to minimize the precipitation of nickel silicides and to choose a boriding thermal cycle that will not remove the prior heat treatment. This proposed project involves a collaboration between Surface Heat Treat and Coating, a Hamilton-based surface hardening heat treatment company, and Prof. R.J. Klassen of the University of Western Ontario to assess the effect of various boronizing processes on the microstructure, local hardness, and wear resistance of the resulting nickel boride layers on the heat treated Inconel 718 alloy. The objective is to understand, the microstructural evolution that occurs during this boriding process such that the process can be optimized and offered as a commercial service to users of the Inconel 718 alloy.