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International Conference CIBv 2020 Civil Engineering and Building Services IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1138 (2021) 012044 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1138/1/012044

Study on heat treatment and coating of copper screw female

in friction pair of rock drill

Y Y Wang1*, M Zhao1 and X L Zhang1

1
School of Intelligent Engineering, Shenyang City University, Shenyang, China

* [email protected]

Abstract. Aiming at the copper screw female parts of the rock drill friction pair that are made
of tin bronze and easy to wear, the material, hardness, the metallographic structure and other
comparative studies have conducted in-depth research on the formation mechanism of the
application of thermal spraying technology on the copper spiral female parts of the rock drill
product. The copper spiral female in the friction pair of the rock drill after heat treatment and
thermal spraying has been tested on site by the customer. With better results, it is hoped that it
can be used as a reference for the study of other friction pairs in rock drill products.

1. Introduction
Pneumatic rock drill occupies a large share in the market of rock drilling machinery due to its low price.
It is widely used in mining, railway and highway construction sites, and its working environment is
generally in open air, pit or tunnel, etc [1]. The screw female is the most critical part of the rotary
mechanism in pneumatic rock drill [2]. It is usually made of tin bronze, and its quality directly affects
the service life of pneumatic rock drill. According to the field survey, the tin bronze screw female used
by a certain type of pneumatic rock drill has a very low life, with a footage of only about 2000m, causing
serious waste of scarce non-ferrous metals. Serious wear of the screw parent is bound to lead to serious
wear of the matching screw rod, which will significantly reduce the drilling efficiency of pneumatic
rock drill [3, 4]. Skalka P et al. [5] studied the effect of the waviness of the bond coat and the thickness
of the thermally grown oxide (TGO)layer on the stability of plasma-sprayed thermal barrier coatings.
Slámečka K et al. [6] based on the obtained results and experimental evidence from the literature, a role
of the interfacial topography in the failure sequence is discussed for oxidized and thermally-cycled
coatings. Yin Ao [7], Su X et al. [8] took tin bronze (QSn7-0.2) as the research object, and heat treated
the high temperature extruded tin bronze at 200, 300, 400 and 500°C respectively. The results show that
the grain size and microstructure distribution of tin bronze are more uniform after heat treatment and
annealing at 350~450°C, and it has better hardness, strength and plasticity, which is more conducive to
the subsequent processing process. Xiao H [9] studied the effects of heat treatment temperature on
microstructure and mechanical properties of semi-solid extruded ZCuSn10P1 tin bronze. The optimal
heat treatment process is 350°C for 120 min, at which the tensile strength, elongation and Brinel
hardness of tin bronze are 402 MPa, 4.5% and 1360 MPa, respectively, which are increased by 3.88%,
60.71% and 6.25% compared with those before heat treatment.
Therefore, it is an urgent problem for pneumatic rock drill to improve the service life of screw female
and make it consistent with the service life of screw rod. Female in this paper, the two manufacturers
copper screw parts of contrast research, including material, hardness, microstructure of the thermal

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International Conference CIBv 2020 Civil Engineering and Building Services IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1138 (2021) 012044 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1138/1/012044

spraying technique on the mother rock drill product copper screw parts then explores its formation
mechanism research, the drill after heat treatment and thermal spraying of the friction pair copper screw
female on customer site test, to reduce the spiral mother wear, improve its service life provides certain
reference basis.

2. Copper screw base material and hardness analysis

The friction pair of copper nut (see figure 1) is the most important connecting transmission mechanism
on pneumatic rock drill. The quality of copper screw base directly affects the service life of pneumatic
rock drill.

Figure 1. Copper nut friction pair.

As tin bronze QSN7-0.2 (chemical composition and properties are shown in table 1) has the
advantages of high strength, good wear resistance, good corrosion resistance, good cutting ability, etc.,
the copper screw female is usually made of tin bronze.

Table 1. Qsn7-0.2 Chemical composition and mechanical properties of tin bronze.

Cu Sn Pb P Al Fe Si Sb Bi Tensile strength Elongation
(MPa) δ10 (％)
6.0～8.0 ≤0.02 ≤0.25 ≤0.02 ≤0.05 ≤0.02 ≤0.002 ≤0.002 ≤0.15 ≥665 ≥2

Abrasion resistance refers to the ability to resist friction. The factors affecting this ability are not only
dependent on the composition, structure and properties of copper, such as hardness carbide
characteristics, quantity, shape and distribution, but also closely related to the conditions of use and
tensile process, such as the adhesion of a large number of sand ash layer on the surface of wire rod.
Soft matrix + hard point is an ideal wear-resistant material (see figure 2). In tin bronze, the matrix is
phase (Sn replacement solid solution in Cu, with a face-centered cubic structure), which has excellent
plasticity and is suitable for cold and hot machining deformation. The hard point (Cu31Sn8, complex
cubic lattice structure) is hard and brittle, and only + phase is usually observed in the cast and annealed
tin bronze tissues.

Figure 2. Relationship between tin content and

mechanical properties of cast Copper-tin alloy [10].

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International Conference CIBv 2020 Civil Engineering and Building Services IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1138 (2021) 012044 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1138/1/012044

Hardness is an important performance index to measure the degree of hardness of metal materials. It
can be understood as the ability of material to resist elastic deformation, plastic deformation or failure,
and can also be expressed as the ability of material to resist residual deformation and anti-failure. Under
the same conditions (the same friction coefficient, composition, microstructure, environmental
conditions, etc.), there is a nonlinear proportional relationship between hardness and wear resistance.
According to the field survey, the sites used are all iron ore. The footage of pneumatic drill products
of A company and B company and the scrap standard of copper screw parent are shown in table 2. The
material and hardness testing of copper screw parent of A Company, B company and C company are
shown in table 3.
As can be seen from the above table, QSn7-0.2 tin bronze is selected as the spiral mother material for
both company A and company b. the spiral mother hardness of company A is 195 HB, and that of
company B is 124 HB.
Further research and improvement will be made on heat treatment and plasma thermal spraying of
copper spiral mother of A company.

Table 2. Field footage and scrap standard for copper screw female.
Working Working Mode of Scrapping Measuring Graphical
Company
time life (m) action standard position representation

A 30 shifts 1380 Measure the width

2.5 m Spline w of spline
drill rod, profile keyway at 18.5
20 holes Wear 2 mm of large end
B 35 shifts 1610 face, and discard it
per shift mm
when w ≥ 7.4 mm

Table 3. Copper spiral parent material and hardness testing.

Manufacturer Cu Sn Pb P Ni Fe Si Ti Hardness (HB) Material

A 91.01 7.28 0.2 0.1 0.6 0.2 195 QSn7-0.2

B 91.07 7.61 0.06 0.2 0.8 0.1 124 QSn7-0.2
C 89.53 9.17 0.1 0.2 0.21 0.2 0.3 0.1 184 ZSn10

3. Research on plasma thermal spraying

Thermal spraying technology is through the flame, or plasma arc heat source, will be a linear or
powdered material heated to melt or semi-molten state, and accelerate the formation of molten drop,
high speed spray to form coating matrix, the properties of materials can be strengthened or regeneration,
protection, and the components caused by corrosion or wear processing out-of-tolerance size reduced to
repair. The surface of the material can also be given special properties.
Plasma spraying is a thermal spraying processing method in which rigid non-transfer plasma arc is
used as heat source to heat the powder material to molten or semi-molten state and spray it to the surface
of the pretreated workpiece through high-speed flame flow to form spray coating. Its principle is shown
in figure 3.

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International Conference CIBv 2020 Civil Engineering and Building Services IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1138 (2021) 012044 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1138/1/012044

Figure 3. Diagram of plasma spraying [11].

In the process of coating formation, a single molten particle is the basic unit of coating formation, and
its behavior reflects the characteristics of coating formation. The behavior of a single particle consists
of three basic processes: first, the spraying material is sent to a heat source; then comes the interaction
process between the spraying material and the heat source. Under the action of the heat source, the
material is heated, melted and accelerated. At the same time, the interaction process between high
temperature and high speed particles and the ambient atmosphere also occurs. Finally, the collision of
high temperature and high speed molten particles with the matrix, horizontal flow flattening and rapid
cooling solidification are discussed. The whole process is completed in a very short time of tens of
microseconds.
The spray gun is actually a non-transfer arc generator, which is the most critical component. It
concentrates the electricity, gas, powder and water of the whole system on the spray gun. The spray gun
can be supplied with direct current by connecting to the power supply, which is usually a full-wave
silicon rectifier. Spray gun can be replaced by nozzle and other parts to meet the requirements of
spraying different materials. The spray gun is shown in figure 4. The top end of the spray gun is the
powder conveying conduit, and the bottom end is the pipeline of cooling water and working gas. The
powder feeder used is shown in figure 5.

Figure 4. Plasma gun. Figure 5. Powder feeder

of plasma spray.

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International Conference CIBv 2020 Civil Engineering and Building Services IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1138 (2021) 012044 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1138/1/012044

4. Copper spiral mother heat treatment and coating

Copper spiral mother is the raw material of tin bronze QSn7-0.2 in the manufacturing process, through
the process of thermal deformation. After the alloy was heated and extruded, the structure property of
billet was the best, especially the section shrinkage rate. It can be found from the study that the high
temperature extrusion of tin bronze by induction heating has good plasticity and strength. However, in
the processing process of high temperature extrusion, the grain structure of tin bronze is not evenly
distributed, and some grains grow up unusually, resulting in the unstable plastic performance of tin
bronze and the potential safety hazard. In order to solve this problem, it can be annealed after warm
extrusion to make its structure homogenize, reduce the internal stress and improve its plastic property,
which is beneficial to the subsequent spinning and other processing technology, and has a certain effect
on reducing the stress concentration and improving the surface smoothness.
Tin bronze alloy is mainly composed of copper, tin, nickel, lead and other elements. The diffusion
process of tin in solid state in copper is very slow, and it is easy to form in-grain segregation and a small
amount of 8-phase in as-cast state, and it can be eliminated only after homogenizing annealing at high
temperature. Both, nickel and copper are plane-centered cubic structures, and the difference in atomic
radius is very small. Therefore, nickel can dissolve in unbounded solid, but nickel diffuses slowly in
copper, and it is easy to form significant dendritic structure. Lead does not dissolve in copper and is
generally distributed in a free phase between the crystal branches. By analyzing the main components
of the alloy, combining with the phase diagram, changing the distribution of the eutectoid between the
dendritic crystals and the dendrites by means of heat treatment can obviously change the properties of
the alloy. Through the comparison of the above test results, it can be seen that the peak performance
index of the alloy between 350 ~ 450°C appears, indicating that the conductivity, hardness and tensile
strength of the alloy have been effectively improved at this time. The test data after heat treatment
annealing are shown in table 4.
Table 4. Annealing heat treatment data sheet.
No. Annealing annealing external internal tooth root
temperature time (min) hardness (HB) hardness (HB) hardness (HB)
(°C)
A 370 40 179 177 172
B 370 10 139 180 152
C 250 40 182 209 202
D 400 10 116 137 120

The metallographic structure after annealing is shown in figure. 6. The structure is α phase + δ phase,
the black dendritic axis is copper rich solid solution (α phase), the white is tin rich solid solution (δ
phase), the grain size and microstructure are uniformly distributed, and a large number of equiaxial twins
can be seen. This is because static recrystallization occurs in tin bronze with the increase of annealing
temperature.

Figure 6. Spiral mother QSN7-0.2 annealed metallographic structure.

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International Conference CIBv 2020 Civil Engineering and Building Services IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1138 (2021) 012044 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1138/1/012044

Hard alloy is an excellent tool material and structural material. At present, its production raw material
is mainly nano-tungsten-Cobalt (WC-CO) composite powder. Tungsten carbide (WC) is a kind of hard
alloy material with high hardness, thermal stability and good wear resistance. Tungsten carbide insoluble
in water, hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid, easy to dissolve in nitric acid - hydrofluoric acid mixed
acid. Pure tungsten carbide is brittle and can reduce brittleness if a small amount of metals such as
titanium and cobalt are added. Tungsten carbide used as steel cutting tools is often added with titanium
carbide, tantalum carbide or a mixture of them to improve the anti-explosion ability, and its chemical
properties are stable. The powder is shown in figure 7.

a. Unsintered powder b. Sintered powder

Figure 7. Nanometer Tungsten-Cobalt (WC-CO) composite powder.

Copper screw parent is shown in figure 8.

a. Copper screw before thermal spraying b. Copper screw after thermal spraying
Figure 8. Copper screw female.

After dealing with the annealing and thermal plasma spraying of copper screw female, with untreated
copper screw female field test in some iron mine, test data as shown in table 5, can be seen from the
table, after annealing and plasma thermal spraying, the copper screw female longevity by about 22.5%.

Table 5. Improved field test data table of copper screw parent.

Company Mode of action Working time Working life (m) Remarks

31 shifts 1426 before

A
2.5 m drill rod, improvement
20 holes per shift 38 shifts 1748 after
A
improvement

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International Conference CIBv 2020 Civil Engineering and Building Services IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 1138 (2021) 012044 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1138/1/012044

5. Conclusion
The results show that the structure of the alloy tends to be homogenized with the reasonable annealing
system, and the performance index peaks, but the elongation after fracture decreases. Therefore, by
selecting a reasonable heat treatment process for the new type tin - bearing copper casting, the
conductivity, hardness, tensile strength and other properties of the material can be improved completely,
the study can be extended to other friction pair of pneumatic rock drill products.

References
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[5] Skalka P, Slámečka K, Pokluda J and Čelko L 2015 J. Sur. & Coat. Tech. 274 26
[6] Slámečka K, Skalka P, Pokluda J and Čelko L 2016 J. Sur. & Coat. Tech. 304 574
[7] Yin A, Feng Z, Hui R and Guo H 2018 J. Foundry Tech. Tools 39 2854
[8] Su X, Feng Z, Gao C, and Hao W 2017 J. Foundry Tech. Tools 42 156
[9] Xiao H, Duan Z, Li N, Xiong C, Zhou R, Lu D and Jiang Y 2019 J. Rare Metal Mat. and Eng.
48 235
[10] Tian R and Wang Z 2002 Copper alloy and its processing manual (Chang Sha: Central South
University Press)
[11] Xu B and Liu S 2002 New technology in surface engineering (Bei Jing: national defence
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