Cutting tools have been advancing with time., There have been new tools on the table for difficult procedures. Tungsten carbide rods are one of them. Tungsten Carbide Rods are made to meet the highest standards of quality. They are an excellent product for making your cutting tools. In cutting tools, a tungsten carbide rod is used to produce drilling bits, end mills, and reamers. These grades are also available with custom diameters and lengths in both Imperial and metric measurements in the market. But what a tungsten carbide rod is?
What is Tungsten Carbide Rod?
There is a hard material called tungsten carbide, composed of a metal matrix composite consisting of carbide particles serving as the aggregate and a metallic binder serving as the matrix. In the history of composite engineering materials, it has proven to be one of the most successful ones. A unique combination of strength, hardness, and toughness makes this material ideal for the most demanding applications.
Among the many names for these rods, they are also referred to as rotary tool blanks or cutting tool blanks.
Advantages Of Tungsten Carbide
- This material has a much higher hardness than HSS.
- This material possesses great durability.
- Extremely hard to scratch.
- Since it is made so that it is adaptable, you can control how hard it gets when it is melted down, so you can determine how hard you want it to be.
- If it is heated to very high temperatures, the hardness of the material will remain.
What Is Its Purpose?
It will not be wrong to say that the milling industry is almost based on the tungsten carbide rod. In sectors, carbide rods manufacture has been increased, implying the more demand for tools. you could use it for numerous purposes, some of which are as follows:
- It is common to use tungsten carbide rods for drills, end mills, reamers, and the manufacture of drill bits.
- In addition, you can use tungsten carbide rods for cutting, punching, and measuring tools.
- The non-ferrous metal and paper industries both use polymer in the processes of packaging, printing, and making paper.
- A wide range of other products are also processed using this machine, such as high-speed steel, tapered milling cutters, cemented carbide cutters, NAS cutting tools, aviation tools, cemented carbide core bits for drill bits, milling cutter cores, high-speed steel, tapered milling cutters, and metric milling cutters.
- A major contribution comes in micro-end milling cutters, reaming pilots, electronic tools, step drills, metal cutting saws, diamonds double-guaranteed, gun barrels, angle milling cutters, and cemented carbide rotary files, and cemented carbide tools, among others.
- Cutting and drilling tools (like micrometers, twist drills, drills for vertical mining tool indicators), input pins, worn parts of rollers, and structural materials, are manufactured with carbon steel rods.
- Moreover, you can apply it in various industries such as machinery, chemicals, petroleum, metallurgy, electronics, and defense.
- To enhance the wearability of metal parts, pile-up welding with tungsten carbide welding rods are usually used. The YZ20 – 30g is used primarily for thick electrode surfacing work and scraping the parts and components.
- You may achieve welding layers of 3 to 4 mm with YZ30 – 40g multi-electrodes; you may achieve thin layers of surfacing using YZ40 – 60g tubular alloy electrodes.
Why do you need one?
We are increasingly using tungsten carbides in modern society. It is anticipated that their range of applications will grow substantially shortly since they are being produced in large quantities for a wide range of applications. As research and development activities increase, the tungsten carbide market is forecast to receive a boost from technology advancements and the use of tungsten carbide in ammunition, jewelry, and other applications over the forecast period.
Over the forecast period, demand for high-quality tungsten carbide is projected to grow in end-use industries due to increased high-quality products. It is forecast that the increased demand for tungsten carbide will be driven by the superior properties of the final tungsten carbide products in the future. There have been several recent developments in manufacturing jewelry from tungsten carbide due to its high hardness and resistance to scratching. Although tungsten carbide has many positive attributes, it is a relatively high price compared to other metal carbides and hinders market growth. Among the many applications for which tungsten carbide is used in numerous industries, ammunition is a good substitute material for uranium. Due to the lack of uranium in some regions and the adverse health effects caused by its use, it is anticipated that the production of tungsten carbide will become the most attractive market for companies engaged in the industry.
Steps for Making Tungsten Carbide Rod
Generally speaking, making tungsten bars is not a difficult process, and does not require a lot of expertise.
- Manufacturers of tungsten bars manufacture them by grinding tungsten metal ores into a fine powder and coating them with fine powder.
- By chemically processing the powder, tungsten oxide is formed, which is oxidized by heat to yield pure tungsten powder.
- This pure powder is placed in a mould and hydraulically pressed into a bar form. A mould is used to place the powder in, and the hydroxide is used to press it into a bar shape.
- Metal powder is further consolidated after sintering, enabling the bar to be shipped to manufacturers.
- The process of purification includes complex chemical reactions and filtration to reach the required purity level. The result is typically high purity tungsten powder.
- Depending on the intended use, the powder can have a range of particle sizes and shapes. Although it can remain powder, it is more commonly compressed into a solid form.
- The procedure involves a series of high-temperature, electrical current, and hydrogen-filled procedures.
- This process causes the tungsten to condense and harden, at which point it takes the form of a bar. tungsten bars do not possess the required level of strength and resilience at this point, so they must proceed through additional processes so that they can be rolled and drawn or flattened into the final form.
- After the bars are forged, they are pulled through dies, rolled in mills and exposed to high temperatures and electrical currents.
The main process flow of manufacturing tungsten carbide rods includes wet milling followed by mixing the powder. Afterward, the mixture is crushed, dried, and sieved. The forming agent is added to the mixture, and the mixture is again dried. Later on, it is again sieved and then got ready for granulation. After granulation, the mixture was taken for pressing and forming the rods through low-pressure sintering. Cylindrical and fine grinding is applied as part of the granulation process. The dimension of the formed rods are detected, and they are made ready for the warehouse.
How to Cut Tungsten Carbide Rod?
As the carbide rod may be used for multiple purposes and thus its size may need to be altered according to the requirements. However, there could be numerous ways to cut the tungsten carbide rod.
Cutting with a Free-Hand
- Use a tabletop grinder to secure the cutting wheel. Different grinders behave differently during this process. You can follow the right technique according to the grinder you are using.
- You will need a marker to mark the area where you will be cutting the carbide rod.
- Press the carbide against the diamond grinding wheel firmly with both hands after turning on the grinder. The carbide rod should be removed from the cutter as far as possible and cooled in clean water.
- As you finish chopping the remaining 50 percent of the material, slide the carbide rod into the cutter on the side you have not yet cut. You may need to remove the carbide rod again and cool it in water if necessary.
Use Cutting Tool
- Place the carbide rod into a vice to ensure it is secured in position. However, carbide may crack if placed under pressure, despite being extremely hard. Hold the carbide in the vice and don’t apply excessive pressure, but keep it tight enough that it won’t move.
- The diamond-cutting wheel should be tightened to the angle grinder so that it won’t move.
- It would help if you marked the precise place where you will cut the carbide rod with a marker.
- Then, you should start the angle grinder and cut the carbide rod directly through. It would help if you didn’t use the grinder’s wheel to cut the carbide rod. Using a cutter that is too strong may cause the carbide to shatter. The excessive heat built up in the cutter, and the carbide resulted.
- The cutter and carbide should not be lubricated. Using a lubricant will cause the cutting wheel to be less effective when it comes to cutting.
Famous Carbide Rod Brand And Carbide Grade
Numerous tungsten carbide rods suppliers deal with quality ground carbide rods. However, not all the suppliers you choose can give you a good quality tungsten rod on a good budget. Thus, below are some reputed tungsten carbide rods suppliers that you may select.
tungsten carbide rod, tungsten carbide rod, tungsten carbide rods suppliers.
Famous Carbide Rod Brand And Carbide Grade
Numerous tungsten carbide rods suppliers deal with quality ground carbide rods. However, not all the suppliers you choose can give you a good quality tungsten rod on a good budget. Thus, below are some reputed tungsten carbide rods suppliers that you may select.
tungsten carbide rod, tungsten carbide rod, tungsten carbide rods suppliers.
Sandvik
Sandvik is one of the market leaders in metal cutting, so Sandvik offers customers a wide range of brands to meet their technical product requirements and the performance needs they have. Sandvik Hard Materials will offer various ultra-fine grain sizes and combinations of submicron and micron sizes to meet performance, corrosion resistance, hardness, and toughness requirements (H3F, H6F, H6FF, H10F, H15F, H6N, H11N, H12N), a DZ class grade (submicron coupled with the right amount of adhesive) and carbide coarse grain size. In addition to these ultrafine grade PCB material series, we have also developed advanced PCB tooling for our customers to improve productivity and quality. With operations in three areas of business activity, the SandvikGroup, headquartered in Sweden, specializes in global high-tech engineering and is responsible for research, design, production, and sales of the company’s products and services. We should mention Sandvik Machining Solutions, a market-leading manufacturer of innovative tools and tooling systems for advanced industrial metal cuttings. It produces some of the best carbide rods china.
In addition to providing high-quality tool blanks, the company offers open tolerance, coolant channel, and long rods. As the raw material for precision cutting tools, rotary tool blanks usually resemble long cylinders or rods. The grade chart of Sandvik has been given below: Milling Grades
Kennametal
It is the World’s largest manufacturer of steel. Kennametal, a global company, based in western Pennsylvania, USA, began its operations in China in 1991 via a fully owned foreign subsidiary in Beijing called Kennametal Xuzhou Co. Ltd. Since the founding of Kennametal Ltd. in 1999, Kennametal has established a manufacturing facility in the Jinqiao Export Processing Zone in Pudong, Shanghai, and acquired Kennametal Hardpoint Inc. During this time they have built the need for our high-quality products and engineering support, as well as our design services and training activities to a broader customer base in China. Known for its quality carbide products, the Kennametal brand remains synonymous with such products. It should come as no surprise then that Complex Metallurgy & Material Science is their area of expertise. In addition to high-performance cemented carbide blanks, Kennametal Inc offers a wide range of metallurgical properties and dimensions to ensure superior accuracy.
ZCC
ZCC, the largest Chinese cutting tool manufacturer, specializes in manufacturing high-quality tools at competitive prices. Their European branch was opened in Düsseldorf in 2006 to serve the European market and ZCC Cutting Tools Europe. Their quality tungsten carbide products are made with high-purity original and virgin raw materials and are highly resistant to corrosion and wear. To produce tungsten carbide powders and rods from the metals mined at its facilities, its subsidiary Zhuzhou Cemented Carbide (ZCC) processes the metals at its facilities. The primary materials used in making ZCC Cutting Tools consist of the following: steel, stainless steel, carbon steel, etc. Its products are made from carbide rods, and the solid carbide tools are ground from the rods while the carbide powder inserts are punched from the powder.
Ceratizit
Our group of companies is a supplier of hard material products designed to protect against wear and make cutting tools longer lasting. One of the World’s largest producers of hard metals, they have a more than 3,000 member company network. Ceratiziit Group has gathered together four of the largest and most strategic competence brands at the World’s leading exhibitions to consolidate and enhance its support for customers in nearly every field associated with engineering and manufacturing. In addition to the precise coordination of the three grades covered by the complete range in turn-milling austenitic stainless steels, the free selection of different chip breakers is another distinguishing feature. For negative indexable inserting, customers can select from three geometries, while for positive inserting, there are two. The customers can also choose from the three cutting material grades when choosing the geometries. Therefore, CERATIZIT has integrated and seamlessly covered all application fields involving machining austenitic and stainless steel.
Gesac
The GESAC company manufactures high-quality cutting tools in China. Throughout the production of shank tools and cutting inserts, the expertise of the experts ensures that the products will meet the highest standards of quality.
With advanced research, development, and manufacturing advantages of tungsten materials, GESAC has completed the research, production, and sales chain of cutting tools from raw material to deep processing products.
GESAC has mastered each production stage of rigid alloy batching, blending, molding, sintering, and machining through years of in-depth research on powder metallurgy technology. The rigid alloy products manufactured by GESAC are made from quality tungsten powder, tungsten carbide, and cobalt powder combined with advanced production equipment. Furthermore, it is devoted to creating unique technologies concerning the manufacturing of tungsten powder to control the particle size and the distribution area of tungsten powder accurately and improve the property properties and quality of tungsten powder exhaustively. To satisfy the increasing demands for tungsten material specifications that are more stringent than ever, the tungsten powders provided here allow for the production of various tungsten alloy materials. The company operates with the mission of “Strengthening China’s tungsten industry and boosting advanced global manufacturing.”
One of the company’s core values is giving customers excellent service and cultivating employees diligently. Taking advantage of technology, they create innovations that push us forward.
Carbide Grades
P Steel |
01 | C8 | Precision finishing | increasing wear resistanceincreasing shock resistance |
10 | C7 | Light finishing | ||
20 | C6 | Semi-finishing | ||
30 | ||||
40 | C5 | Roughing & general purpose | ||
50 | ||||
M Stainless Steel |
10 | – | Precision finishing | increasing wear resistanceincreasing shock resistance |
20 | – | Semi-finishing | ||
30 | – | General purpose | ||
40 | – | Roughing | ||
K Cast Iron |
01 | C4 | Precision finishing | increasing wear resistanceincreasing shock resistance |
10 | C3 | Semi-finishing | ||
20 | C2 | General purpose | ||
30 | C1 | Roughing |
The use of tungsten carbide varies depending on the application. There have been plenty of instances where Boeing machinists have been able to distinguish between lots of aluminum that seem identical. To be successful in every cutting job, a different set of factors needs to be considered.
Conclusion
These tungsten carbide products are suitable for cutting tools, mining tools, wear parts, etc. These products are used widely in aerospace, military, machining, metallurgy, oil drilling, etc. The wide range of applications and the high-quality stability of carbide products greatly raise the demand for these products. While tungsten is also known as wolfram, tungsten carbide is the most widely used form in industrial applications. Among the many industries of tungsten metal, Huana tungsten has produced solid carbide rods for many years and has gained a good reputation at home and abroad.