How Much Do You Know About Tungsten Carbide Powder?

Tungsten carbide is known as one of the hardest materials in the world, and people are very familiar with this kind of material. But how about tungsten carbide powder, the raw material of tungsten carbide products? In this article, we are going to know something about tungsten carbide powder.

As the raw material

Tungsten carbide products are all made of tungsten carbide powder. In manufacturing, some other powders will be added to the tungsten carbide powder as a binder to combine tungsten carbide particles very tightly. In the ideal condition, the higher proportion of tungsten carbide powder, the better the performance of tungsten carbide products will be. But in fact, pure tungsten carbide is fragile. This is why binder exists. The name of the grade always can show you the number of binders. Like YG8, which is the common grade used to produce tungsten carbide products, has 8% of cobalt powder. A certain amount of titanium, cobalt, or nickel can change the performance of tungsten carbide. Take cobalt as an example, the best and most common proportion of cobalt is 3%-25%. If the cobalt is more than 25%, the tungsten carbide will be soft because of too many binders. This tungsten carbide can’t be used to manufacture other tools. If less than 3%, the tungsten carbide particles are difficult to bind and the tungsten carbide products after sintering will be very brittle. Some of you may be confused, why do manufacturers say the tungsten carbide powder with binders is produced with 100% pure raw materials? 100% pure raw materials mean that our raw materials are not recycled from others.

Many scientists are trying to find a better manufacturing way to decrease the amount of cobalt, while still keeping the great performances of tungsten carbide.

Performances of tungsten carbide powder

Tungsten carbide has many characteristics, so it is not difficult to imagine that tungsten carbide powder also has many advantages and characteristics. Tungsten carbide powder is not soluble, but it is dissolved in aqua regia. So the tungsten carbide products are always chemically stable. Tungsten carbide powder has a melting point of around 2800℃ and the boiling point of around 6000℃. So cobalt is easy to melt while tungsten carbide powder is still under high temperature. 

If you are interested in tungsten carbide products and want more information and details, you can CONTACT US by phone or mail at the left, or SEND US MAIL at the bottom of the page.