What Is KenCast and How Can It Be Used?

By: Ian Cheshuk

The wear and tear of any item is a concern to people running or working with items that are constantly being used to shape and form materials. Even in day to day life, everyone considers the value of their products and how long they’ll stand up to their wear—for example, a new can opener or a good set of sheets. In custom fabrication, those concerns are amplified because of the extreme abrasiveness and high-impact applications of work. The solution? KenCast.

What is KenCast?

KenCast is a material designed and manufactured by Kennametal, that you can apply to equipment to resist abrasive wear. Wear can translate to expensive equipment repair, replacement costs, and can cause downtime, which results in a loss of valuable working hours for employees. Made of tungsten carbide particles that have been metallurgically bonded to air-hardened steel, KenCast allows for up to six times longer wear thanks to the combination of steel and carbide. It’s very versatile as well, allowing for various applications. For this reason, it’s an excellent tool to have for custom fabrication and can be used on machines, components, and parts.

How to use KenCast

The material must be welded onto the item being used, and Kennametal even offers straightforward instructions on their website on best practices for locating and welding it properly. The process used to apply is called dead bedding, a technique used by attaching small, thin bars in a staggered pattern onto the item. The abrasive material from the application fills the gaps between the KenCast parts as it moves over them.

Potential applications

At Bit Service, we’ve come up with several different areas we could see this being beneficial. The first is for continuous miner drums, as it would be useful for block and pedestal protection in these machines. Surface mining buckets are another good application—protecting the bucket lips, skid plates, heel bands, and wing shrouds form abrasion work well here. Underground mining tools could also be a potential application, with equipment like a gathering arm loader, gripper cleats, and continuous and longwall mining drums being protected.

Grinding tools can also be protected. These tools fall under the category of high impact, meaning KenCast could protect them from impact and abrasion. Horizontal grinders and tub grinders can benefit from KenCast, protecting grinder hammer tips and swing hammers, respectively.

Specific to Bit Service, we see the benefit in KenCast for other things as well, like AM-50 and AM-100 cutting heads, two-rotor and four-rotor miner tooling, and AQM Roadheader cutting heads. KenCast also has its own grinder hammer tips that last up to 10 times longer than competitive overlay-style tools. 

Overall, KenCast is a great way to prolong the life of parts that can be expensive and time-consuming to replace. With this material, you’re sure to reduce how often something needs to be replaced and repaired, allowing for a more productive workspace with far less downtime.