Horea
Chicinaș

PhD | R&D Engineer | Project Manager

My goal is to inspire, empower and challenge young
students and researchers.
I’m a researcher who is passionate about helping people become more capable and productive.

Research Projects

Short presentation of latest research projects.

Aqueous Hard Metals

2020-2022

The goal of this project is to develop an aqueous route to replace the conventional organic media route for the milling of raw material powders used in the extrusion process of cemented carbides tools, without affecting the final product properties. The results of the present research are intended to provide necessary knowledge steps to decide upon the feasibility of replacing the expensive, hazardous and environmentally unfriendly organic milling media with water. The use of extrusion as a compaction process will enable the production of round or profiled rods/tubes with larger length/diameter ratio, which is required for the production of drills, reamers or any cutting tools. However, the mixing of the dried powder with the plasticiser reveals particular challenges, which will be studied during this research project.

Innovative eco-friendly process for producing WC-Co type compacts for cutting tools

2019-2020

The purpose of this project is to use an alternative eco-friendly milling media for the development of eco-technologies for the production of advanced materials used in the field of cutting tools. The use of an aqueous milling environment would eliminate the disadvantages generated by the use of organic media. The implementation of such a milling environment involves certain challenges, such as oxidation of constituents during milling. The optimization of such a technology is an application research topic in the field of materials engineering.

Research on the replacement of traditional milling media for the manufacturing of WC-Co tools

2015 - 2018

This study was conducted to determine the feasibility of an aqueous milling process in the production of WC-Co powders for cemented carbides. Employing an aqueous milling process would improve the economic aspects significantly considering the raw materials’ significantly lower price, as well as the reducing the environmental impact as compared to the traditional organic solvent processing routes.

Published Work

Representative ISI papers

Ceramics International

December 15th, 2019

Preparation and characterisation of WC-10Co powders obtained by aqueous milling.

Advanced Powder Technology

August 8th, 2018

Influence of process control agent type on the mechanosynthesis of Fe3O4 particles.

Journal of Materials Science

October 16th, 2018

Influence of aqueous milling duration on the sintered WC–10Co hard metal powders.

Powder Metallurgy

August 8th, 2018

Influence of milling media on the structure and agglomeration behaviour of some hard-metal powder.

Journal of Alloys and Compounds

July 15th, 2016

Preparation and characterisation of Co-Fe-Ni-M-Si-B (M = Zr, Ti) amorphous powders by wet mechanical alloying.

Refractory Metals and Hard Materials

January 5th, 2021

Influence of milling media on the properties of some hard metal powders