What are the characteristics of cemented carbide tools?

Carbide tools, especially indexable carbide tools, are the leading products of CNC machining tools, and since the 1980s, a variety of integral and indexable carbide tools, or inserts, have been extended to various machining areas. Tools, with indexable carbide tools have expanded from simple tools and face mills to precision, complex, and forming tools in the field So, what are the characteristics of carbide tools?

1, high hardness: carbide tools are made of carbide with high hardness and melting point (called hard phase) and metal bonding agent (called bonding phase) through powder metallurgy method, its hardness is 89 ~ 93HRA, much higher than HSS, at 5400C, the hardness can still reach 82 ~ 87HRA, the same as HSS room temperature hardness (83 ~ 86HRA). The hardness of cemented carbide varies with the nature, quantity, particle size and metal-bonded phase content, and generally decreases as the metal-bonded phase content increases. The hardness of YT alloys is higher than that of YG alloys with the same content of adhering phases, while alloys containing TaC (NbC) have higher hardness at high temperatures.

2, Bending strength and toughness: The bending strength of common cemented carbide is in the range of 900~1500MPa. The higher the content of metal bonding phase, the higher the bending strength. When the binder content is the same, YG(WC-Co). alloy has higher strength than YT(WC-Tic-Co) alloy, and the strength decreases with the increase of TiC content. Cemented carbide is a brittle material, and its room temperature impact toughness is only 1/30 to 1/8 of HSS.

3, good wear resistance. Cutting speed of cemented carbide tools is 4~7 times higher than HSS, and tool life is 5~80 times higher. Manufacture of molds and gauges, life is 20 to 150 times higher than alloy tool steel. Can cut about 50HRC hard material.

The use of carbide tools: carbide tools are generally used in CNC machining centers, CNC engraving machines. It can also be installed on the ordinary milling machine to process some relatively hard and uncomplicated heat treatment materials.

The current market of composite materials, industrial plastics, organic glass materials and non-ferrous materials and other materials processing tools are carbide tools, with high hardness, wear resistance, good toughness, heat resistance, corrosion resistance and other characteristics. As well as a series of excellent performance, especially its high hardness and wear resistance, even at a temperature of 500 ℃ basically remain unchanged, at 1000 ℃ still has a high hardness.

Cemented carbide is widely used as tooling materials, such as turning tools, milling tools, planing tools, drills, boring tools, etc., for cutting cast iron, non-ferrous metals, plastics, chemical fibers, graphite, glass, stone, etc. Common steel, also can be used to cut heat-resistant steel, stainless steel, high manganese steel, tool steel and other difficult-to-machine materials. Today's new carbide tools cut hundreds of times faster than carbon steel.