Grinding media wear during mechanical alloying of Ni-W alloys in a SPEX mill

Mechanical alloying (MA) is utilized for producing powdered materials having intriguing properties and structures. Some of these materials manifest extended solid solubility. Mechanical alloying has also been used to synthesize equilibrium and nonequilibrium intermediate (or intermetallic) phases, amorphous materials and inorganic nonmetallics. In their laboratory the authors have been studying the amorphization of Ni-W alloys, accomplished by extended grinding in a SPEX mill. It was brought to The authors' attention (by the reviewer of a manuscript ) that perhaps the authors ought to be paying some attention to the effect of wear debris on the tendency for, and extent of, the amorphization the authors observed. This paper reports on the contamination that accompanies SPEX milling of No-W alloys. The authors will show that wear debris, while only a small fraction of the total grinding media charge, is sufficient to alter appreciably the composition of the milled powder.