Tungsten Carbide Wire Drawing Dies

Wire drawing dies are the most important part of the wire drawing industry. And for producing high-quality wire at the lowest cost and tons of wire, wire drawing dies are required to be high quality. Improper selection and poor quality of dies add not only to direct die cost but also will produce wire with poor surface finish, low accuracy, and poor metallurgical properties as well as long machine downtime, and consequent loss of production. So it is said that wire making and die making are always a partnership for excellence. This article will simply talk about the significance of tungsten carbide wire drawing dies.

Many materials are available for making wire drawing dies, including tungsten carbide, natural diamond, synthetic diamond, PCD, and so on. Each of them owns a wide range of applications. Almost all wire is either fully or at least partially, from wire rod to a certain size depending upon the material and desired accuracy, by tungsten carbide dies due to their physical properties and effective cost. 

Tungsten carbide dies have high hardness both at room temperature and high temperatures encountered in drawing operations. As tungsten carbide nibs are produced by the powder metallurgy method and are made of tungsten carbide. Tungsten carbide nibs can be made into different grades. Different grades of tungsten carbide wire drawing dies have different hardness, ranging from 1400 to 2000 HV.

Tungsten carbide dies have high resistance against deformation under load and have a small thermal coefficient of expansion. As a result, variation in the size of dies due to rising working temperatures is minimal. Although PCD wire drawing dies may have better performance than tungsten carbide wire drawing dies, tungsten carbide wire drawing dies are cheaper and more cost efficient.

For wire drawing, the nibs are required to be hard to wear resistance and tough to resist deformation under load. Since the hardness and toughness of any material are inversely proportional, an optimum combination of two properties as per the application is required. What’s more, the transverse rupture strength of tungsten carbide wire drawing dies can be 1700 to 2800 N/mm2, which are currently manufactured for drawing. The different grades are obtained by varying the grain size of tungsten carbide and cobalt percentage.

To sum up, wire drawing dies can be made into different materials, however, the most popular one is tungsten carbide wire drawing dies, because they are cost efficient and have great performance.