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The influence of different sintering conditions (sintering temperature and time) on the structure and properties of the investigated tungsten heavy alloy (THA) consisting of tungsten, cobalt, and nickel was evaluated within this study. The samples for sintering were prepared by powder metallurgy techniques (powder mixing followed by isostatic compression), the microstructures were investigated via optical and scanning electron microscopy, and the mechanical properties were investigated by tensile testing. The first part of the experiment was focused on finding the critical temperature to acquire the required microstructure, while the second part was focused on comparison of two selected sintering periods in order to acquire the best possible combination of mechanical and structure properties. The highest hardness reached up to 500 HV for the sample sintered at 1500 °C, however, increasing the sintering temperature to 1525 °C even increased the ultimate tensile strength which exceeded 1000 MPa. This sample also consisted of the smallest agglomerates.
Keywords: Tungsten heavy alloy; powder metallurgy; sintering; scanning electron microscopy© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.