Steel bonded tungsten carbide is a new type of mold material between tungsten carbide and steel. It is a polyphase bonding material made of powder metallurgy by using refractory metal carbides such as TiC and WC as hard phase, alloy steel powder or high-speed steel powder as binder.

 

Its performance is between steel and tungsten carbide. That is, it has both high strength and toughness of steel and high hardness and wear resistance of hard alloy. It has excellent chemical stability, corrosion resistance and high temperature resistance. And the properties can be changed by heat treatment. It can be machined and hot working, so it is widely used in the industry and die industry, making it is suitable for cold drawing, cold extrusion, cold drawing and other cold working die and wear resistant parts.

 

 

The price of tungsten carbide is too high to be machined. As a result, most of the molds are inlaid in the working part or used in other ways (such as bonding, bonding, mechanical connection) to connect the hard alloy, and the other parts are used in general steel. Compared with ordinary tungsten carbide, brittleness of steel bonded tungsten carbide has been greatly improved, but it is still more brittle than general die steel.

 

After annealing and softening, it can machine, milling, planing, drilling, hinges, tapping screws and so on. Because of its poor thermal conductivity, high hardness and difficult grinding, the die should be processed to the final size before quenching or with minimal allowance so that it cannot be grinded or slightly grinded after quenching.

 

Steel bonded tungsten carbide is widely used in dies. It is suitable for punching both non-ferrous metals and ferrous metals. It has obvious effect in making cold working die, such as cold punching, drawing and cold extrusion, or making wear-resistant die and parts.

 

Practice has proved that steel bonded tungsten carbide is suitable for making cold working or cold forming dies or wear-resistant moulds and parts, such as cold punching, cold extrusion and drawing. Through correct heat treatment, the service life of dies can be greatly improved. As the production process is complex and the cost is high, cooling die made by steel bonded tungsten carbide with Heat treatment with small deformation, high hardness and high wear resistance is only suitable for mass production or continuous production.

 

However, as the steel bonded carbide is more brittle than the common die steel, it cannot bear heavy load. Its fracture toughness is also low, which limits its application. China recently successfully developed a new type of high load tungsten carbide, of which the characteristic is that its strength and toughness are greatly improved on the basis of keeping high enough hardness and wear resistance. It has better resistance to heat cracking under the alternating load of quenching and quench heat. It has been applied well in precision mold manufacturing. It is believed that in the near future, there will be more and better steel bonded tungsten carbide materials applied to dies, which will make greater contributions to the prosperity of the die industry.