Cemented carbide, also known as tungsten carbide, is an alloy material made of hard compounds of refractory metals and bonding metals through powder metallurgy. The hardness of cemented carbide can reach 82~95HRA, even at 700℃ The hardness remains basically unchanged, and it still has a high hardness at 1000°C. Because of this, cemented carbide products are not easy to be worn,but brittle, so making holes on tungsten carbide material should be very careful.
Commonly used methods for machining holes in cemented carbide include wire cutting, drill drilling, EDM sparkling, and laser drilling.
1.Carbide wire cutting is a common method for carbide hole processing, and it is suitable for the processing of symmetrical holes.
2.Drilling with a drill is suitable for drilling relatively large holes with a diameter of more than 2MM. The disadvantage of using a drill is that the drill is easy to break, resulting in a high rejection rate of the product.
3.EDM sparkling is one of the common methods for machining holes in cemented carbide. The holes processed by it are generally above 0.2MM. The safety of electric spark drilling is high, the precision is relatively high, and the depth of straight holes is not limited. However, it takes a long time for EDM to process holes, and the processing speed is very slow, which is not suitable for some products with tight delivery time.
4.Carbide hole processing with laser drilling can drill holes above 0.01MM. The precision is very high, and the processing speed is relatively fast. It is the best drilling solution, but its processing depth generally does not exceed 5-8MM.
Oston Carbide owns workshops for EDM and wire cutting, and also has a large number of advanced equipment such as milling machines, grinding machines, CNC machine tools, boring machines, etc., which can meet the special processing requirements of various cemented carbide products of customers and provide solutions for harsh working conditions.
