Abstract

Plasma sprayed ceramic coatings are widely used in various industrial fields to improve their properties or to reduce the production cost. The ceramic powders for plasma spray coating have been mainly manufactured by spray drying or fused+crushed process. In this study, chromium oxide which has better mechanical properties than those of the other ceramic was selected and agglomerated chromium oxide powders for plasma spray coating were produced by spray drying process with a various processing condition. The large hollow powders and the harsh surfaced powders are formed at high slurry feed rate more than 163 g/min. and low binder concentration less than 2wt%, respectively. These powders cause the considerable decrease of flowability and apparent density. The powders produced by spray drying process have the spherical shape with the mean size of 45 µm, but these are shown lower apparent density and flowability than the powders produced by fused+crushed powders. The plasma spray coated layers by spray dried powders are shown a different microstructure with that by fused+crushed powders in porosity shape, but their properties such as density, hardness and bond strength are similar.