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Three commercially available nickel chromium–chromium carbide thermal spray powders have been deposited by HVOF spraying to form coatings. The wear resistance of the coatings depends critically upon the microstructure of the coating in terms of phases present and their distribution. The microstructure of the coating in turn depends upon the nature of the powder from which the coating is sprayed. The blended powder, where the carbide and metallic phases were separate during spraying, exhibited poor deposition efficiency and resulted in a coating with a low volume fraction of poorly bonded, cracked carbides and a coarse level of inhomogeneity. This coating exhibited poor resistance to abrasion with both sharp alumina and rounded silica abrasives. The coating sprayed from a sintered and crushed powder showed extensive reaction during spraying due to oxidation and carbide dissolution and reprecipitation, and with a significant reduction in volume fraction of carbide (but little overall carbon loss). Despite this, the coating still retained a high hardness and exhibited reasonable wear resistance. The coating sprayed from the composite powder exhibited a high deposition efficiency with little evidence of reaction during spraying. There were, however, a number of poorly melted particles within this coating. Due to the high levels of carbide retention and the small degree of reaction of these particles during spraying, this coating exhibited the highest wear resistance of all the coatings deposited despite the lack of particle melting.