Cemented carbide’s comprehensive properties
Cemented carbides are usually composed of ultrafine powders of WC and TiC with high hardness and refractory metal, using cobalt (Co) or nickel (Ni) or molybdenum (Mo) as binder, powder metallurgy products sintered in a vacuum or hydrogen reduction furnace.
Cemented carbide is known as “industrial tooth”, mainly used in cutting tools, stamping tools, molds, mining and construction, road engineering machinery, and other fields.
Cemented carbide production process
Classification of cemented carbides
Cemented carbides are usually classified according to their field of application and tungsten carbide grain size.
According to the application field, it can be divided into mining tool alloy, cutting tool alloy, and wear-resistant tool alloy.
And according to the grain size, it can be divided into seven different categories, such as nano-crystal and ultra-fine crystal.
Generally speaking, the smaller the grain size, the higher the hardness and the better the wear resistance, but at the same time, the toughness decreases and the impact resistance is poor.
Therefore, nanocrystalline, ultra-fine-grain, and sub-fine grain cemented carbides are widely used in cutting tools because of their high hardness, wear-resistance, and sharp cutting edge.
Fine and medium grain cemented carbides are mainly used in cutting tools and wear-resistant tools which require hardness and shock-resistant strength.
Coarse and ultra-coarse grained cemented carbides with high impact resistance and wear resistance are mainly used in mining tools and other fields.
Cemented carbide has good comprehensive properties, high hardness, and toughness.
Compared with high-speed steel, ceramics, and superhard materials, cemented carbide has higher hardness, wear resistance, and red hardness than high-speed steel. Compared with superhard materials, porcelain has higher toughness.
Classification of cemented carbide and its application fields
Cemented carbide’s advantages and disadvantages compared to other materials.
High-speed steel performance index:
Hardness: HRC63-67
Thermal hardness
Cutting speed”40m/min
High-speed steel’s advantages:
With high strength and toughness, and has a certain degree of hardness and wear resistance; simplicity of manufacture
High-speed steel’s disadvantages:
Low hardness, poor red hardness.
Cemented carbide’s performance index:
Hardness: HRC74-82,
Thermal hardness: 800 °C-1000 °C
Cutting Speed: 100-300m/min
Cemented carbide’s advantages:
Hardness, wear resistance, and heat resistance are very good.
High cutting performance and durability are far higher than high-speed steel.
Cemented carbide’s disadvantages:
Low bending strength and toughness;
Low thermal conductivity, poor thermal shock resistance
Ceramics’s performance index:
Hardness: Hra91-95,
Thermal hardness: 1200 °C
Cutting Speed: 100-400m/min
Ceramics’s advantages:
Very high hardness and wear resistance;
High heat resistance;
High chemical stability
Ceramics’s disadvantages:
High Brittleness, low strength, and toughness;
Low thermal conductivity, poor thermal shock resistance
Synthetic polycrystalline diamond (PCD)’s performance index:
Hardness: above HV5000,
thermal hardness: 700 °C-800 °C
Cutting Speed: 2500-5000m/min
Synthetic polycrystalline diamond (PCD)’s advantages:
Extremely high hardness and wear resistance;
Very low coefficient of friction;
The cutting edge is very sharp;
High thermal conductivity;
Thermal expansion.
The coefficient of expansion is several times smaller than that of cemented carbide
Synthetic polycrystalline diamond (PCD)’s disadvantages:
Poor thermal hardness, can not be cut at high temperature;
It has a strong affinity for iron and is not easy to Ferrous
Polycrystalline cubic boron nitride (PCBN)’s performance index:
Hardness: HV8000-10000,
thermal hardness: 1400 °C-1500 °C
Polycrystalline cubic boron nitride (PCBN)’s advantages
Extremely high hardness and wear resistance;
High thermal stability;
Excellent chemical stability;
Good thermal conductivity;
Low coefficient of friction
Polycrystalline cubic boron nitride (PCBN)’s disadvantages
The impact resistance is worse than that of cemented carbide;
Attention should be paid to improving the rigidity of the processing system when using;
Avoid impact cutting as much as possible.
Cemented carbide scale
The annual output value of the domestic cemented carbide industry reaches 100 billion, which is the largest production area in the world.
China’s cemented carbide industry began in the late 1940s, after more than 70 years of development, has become the largest output of cemented carbide countries.
In 2019, the global output of cemented carbide was 108,700 tons, and domestic output of cemented carbide reached 43,500 tons (CAGR = 7.87% in 2010-2019), accounting for about 40% of global output.
Changes in global cemented carbide production from 2017 to 2020
Regional distribution of global cemented carbide production (2019)
China’s cemented carbide production reached 43,500 tons in 2019
In 2019, China’s cemented carbide exports increased to 8,901.95 tons
Tungsten resources in China
The abundant tungsten resources provide an important resource guarantee for the development of cemented carbide industry in China.
According to a 2019 survey by Ceres Consulting, cemented carbide raw materials cost about 90 percent, with tungsten making up about 80 percent and cobalt about 10 percent.
China is the world’s largest store of tungsten.
According to the United States Geological Survey, as of the end of 2019, the world’s proven reserves of tungsten were 3.3 million tons, of which China’s reserves of 1.9 million tons, accounting for 57.6 percent of the world’s total;
In addition to China, tungsten resources are more dispersed, the world’s second-largest tungsten reserves in Russia only 7.3% of the world’s reserves.
Distribution of global tungsten reserves in 2019
Global production of tungsten in 2019
China’s carbide manufacturer’s characteristics
Although China is the world’s largest producer of cemented carbide, from the three dimensions, “big but not strong” obvious characteristics:
- the cluster of small and medium-sized enterprises (smes) leads to keen competition. In 2016, China’s cemented carbide manufacturers were more than 600, and an annual output of more than 100 tons less than 50 enterprises.
In terms of product quality, there is still a big gap between China’s cemented carbide industry and developed countries.
The low-end segment is mainly low-priced, non-quality-controlled products, domestic small and medium-sized enterprises cluster led to serious overcapacity in low-end products.
- most cemented carbide products in China are low-end homogenized products with low added value.
Up to 2020, the proportion of hard alloy deep processing and finish processing still fluctuates between 18% and 27%.
This leads to high-grade cemented carbide numerical control blades and other high-tech content, high value-added cemented carbide products still need to be imported from abroad.
According to the import and export data issued by the general administration of customs, the average unit price of “other cemented carbide metalworking machinery knives and blades” imported into China from 2018 to 2020 is about export six to eight times the price.
The degree of deep processing of domestic enterprises needs to be improved urgently.
The average unit price of imported “other cemented carbide metalworking machinery knives and blades” is about 6-8 times of the export price
Most of the cemented carbide enterprises are in the state of “small, loose, and many”, the product structure is single and the understanding of customer needs is insufficient.
It was unable to provide a full life-cycle solution to its customers.
In order to solve the current situation of low degree of deep processing and low self-sufficiency rate of high-end cemented carbide products in the domestic cemented carbide industry,
with the support of a series of encouraging policies, the cemented carbide industry in China has been growing in scale through resource integration, optimization, and reorganization.
At the same time, through the introduction of absorption and independent innovation in a series of key areas of “choking”, great progress has been made in the production of raw materials, development of products and materials of hard materials, application of technology and equipment, quality inspection and recycling of waste alloys.
With the increase in output and quality of cemented carbides in China, the hardness of cemented carbides in China has been increasing in recent ten years.
The export of quality alloys has increased rapidly, reaching 8,901.95 tons in 2019 and CAGR = 6.97% in 2010-to 2019
Competition pattern, domestic and foreign capital still occupy the leading position, domestic capital is rising gradually.
As of 2020, there are 600-700 cemented carbide manufacturers in the world (excluding small domestic enterprises).
One of the world’s leading producers of cemented carbide in the United States Kenner Metal Company (Kenner Metal), Sweden Sandvik Group (Vik), and so on.
Final Thoughts
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