Patent ID: 7981394

Claim:
A method for treating tungsten carbide particles, comprising the steps of: a) providing a starting material containing cast eutectic tungsten carbide particles having a particle size between 1 μm and 5 mm and comprising WC and W2C, said tungsten carbide particles being of a W—C system whose compositions, microstructures and phase distribution are represented on an equilibrium temperature-composition binary phase diagram plotting temperature against relative concentrations of W and C, said binary phase diagram of the W—C system showing a monophasic domain of a γ solid phase corresponding to WC1-x having a face-centered cubic structure; b) subjecting said starting material to a homogenization heat treatment in said monophasic domain, thereby obtaining WC 1-x monophased particles having a face-centered cubic structure; and c) subsequently to the homogenization treatment of step b), subjecting the tungsten carbide particles to a quenching step to freeze at ambient temperature at least a portion of the face-centered cubic structure and refine grain size of the microstructure, thereby obtaining a final product at ambient temperature containing particles with a finer miscrostructure than the starting material, a particle size about the same size as the particle size of the starting material, a composition comprising at least a portion of face-centered cubic WC 1-x structure.