Tungsten Carbide: What Is It Used For and What Does It Do?
Anyone who works every day with high-quality drill bits, cup mills for hard materials, precision saws, and other cutting tools has surely encountered this metal: tungsten carbide, also known as hardmetal or tungsten carbide.
The name, as with HSS or high-speed steel, is no accident: Wikipedia reminds us that this is one of the hardest materials in the world and is used precisely for this reason. Namely, to build cutting tools and machining tools for industrial machines.
Clearly, the wide commercialization and effectiveness of tungsten carbide have allowed its spread beyond strictly professional sectors and assembly line work. In fact, today it's possible to buy drill bits and cup mills with TCT teeth. That is, tungsten carbide tipped. Do you want to delve deeper into this material?
What Is Tungsten Carbide, an Explanation
Let's start by giving a definition of this material. Tungsten carbide, also known as WC, is a chemical compound not found in nature but created through specific processing. In its raw form, it presents itself as an odorless powder of dark gray color. The result was first achieved in 1893 by French chemist Henri Moissan; about 20 years later, the large-scale commercialization of tools based on this material, which has important characteristics, begins.
What Are Its Potential as a Material?
Setting aside the more intricate chemical and physical details, we can say that the fundamental characteristic of tungsten carbide is hardness. A quality due to the fact that each tungsten atom is surrounded by six carbon atoms in a compact arrangement.
The bond between these elements—carbide and tungsten—is particularly strong. And it gives the result its characteristic hardness, wear resistance, and deformation resistance. In fact, tungsten carbide reaches approximately 9–9.5 on the Mohs scale: a parameter that approaches the hardness of diamond. Furthermore, it resists very well to acidic environments and high temperatures since it melts at a temperature difficult to reach: 2,785–2,830 degrees Celsius. It has high density and poor elasticity.
How Is Tungsten Carbide Used?
The physical characteristics of the compound leave no room for doubt: we're talking about an extremely hard material but also resistant to particular environmental factors. And that can be modeled at the industrial level to assume specific shapes. All this makes tungsten carbide an ideal solution for a whole series of equipment for machining hard materials. For example, with tungsten carbide, mills, drill bits, inserts for turning and milling in CNC machines are made.
If you need to drill hardened steels and alloys, you can use a tungsten carbide drill bit, a material resistant to high temperatures and wear that is also exploited in mining and oil drilling where very resistant drills are needed to drill rocks of different types for days. The automotive, naval, and aerospace sectors widely use tungsten carbide as a coating for parts subject to strong friction and components for engines or turbochargers.
Some Tungsten Carbide (WC) Tools
Now that we understand the capabilities and characteristics of tungsten carbide, we need to focus on the specific uses that concern these precision tools.
What can we do with this material? First of all, even in the Krino catalog you can find cup mills with WC teeth that adapt perfectly to the most demanding machining operations.
You can also find saw blades with teeth coated with this material's grains. With these tools, you can tackle difficult cuts thanks to the hardmetal's resistance.
Of course, there are also drill bits made with the same hardmetal coated in TiAlN, perfect for drilling steel and any type of alloy that is so difficult to tackle with another solution.
