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Why Tungsten Carbide?  Outstanding strength, wear resistance, rigidity, hardness, stability and corrosion resistance!

• Hydro Carbide offers 25 grades of tungsten carbide to deliver specialized solutions to the most demanding applications, using a spectrum of binder concentrations and particle sizes.

  • Grain structure:  Ultra Fine to Coarse

  • Grain size:  0.5 to 4.5 microns (avg)

  • Cobalt %:  3.0% to 23.0%

  • Hardness:  83.5 to 93.0 Ra

  • Density:  13.25 to 15.23 g/cc

• Tungsten carbide is frequently used in cutting tools, dies, wear-resistant machine parts, and abrasives.

  • Strength

  • Wet and dry wear resistance

  • Rigidity

  • High and low temperature hardness

  • Stability

  • Corrosion resistance

• Carbide cutting surfaces are often used for machining through materials such as carbon or stainless steel.  Most of the time, carbide will leave a better finish on the part, and allow faster machining.

• Carbide tools can also withstand higher temperatures than standard high speed steel tools.

• In certain instances, tungsten carbide components outlast steel parts by 100:1.

• In addition, tungsten carbide works extremely well in situations where other tools would wear away, such as in high-quantity production runs or in harsh application environments.

• The outstanding properties of tungsten carbide help engineers design components with physical properties unavailable with any other material.

  • Tungsten carbide (WC) is an inorganic chemical compound containing equal parts of tungsten and carbon atoms.

  • In its most basic form, tungsten carbide is an extremely hard, fine gray powder.  Tungsten carbide is often simply called ' carbide.'

  • In industrial applications, the material is also called ' cemented carbide,' ' hardmetal' or ' tungsten-carbide cobalt.'  WC is a metal matrix composite where tungsten carbide particles are the aggregate and metallic cobalt serves as the matrix.

  • Tungsten carbide is approximately three times stiffer than steel, with a Young's modulus of approximately 550 GPa.

  • The metal is much denser than steel or titanium, comparable with corundum in hardness.

  • WC can only be polished and finished with diamond wheels and compounds.

• Tungsten carbide powder can be pressed and formed into many shapes for use in industrial machinery, tools, abrasives, as well as jewelry.

General Properties of Tungsten Carbide (2 pages, 69KB PDF)