It is an amazing story which saw founders Neill (corr) Ricketts (corr) and Will Battrick (corr) leave successful executive positions in a leap of faith to found the Forest of Dean-based advanced materials firm, which now employs more than 50 staff.

Yesterday’s interim statement also outlined operating losses of £190,000, but that cannot detract from the excitement the management feel for their business, a confidence underlined by "best recognised" fund manager Henderson Global taking a 10.31 per cent stake in Versarien.

What its results underline is a company which sees "significant growth" ahead and an ability to deliver "a substantial return on investment".

Key to the success of the porous metals specialist has been the acquisition of the business Total Carbide, a manufacturer of tungsten carbide machine parts for a number of key industries.

California Knife and Blade and its global brand Baucor are excited to enter 2014 with state of the art grinding technologies to make industrial blades and machine knives, and materials include carbon steel, spring steel, tool steel, D2 tool steel, M2 high speed steel, tungsten carbide, CPM 10V and 9V, 400 series stainless steel, 300 series stainless steel, 1075 and 1095 spring steels. . The blade materials are heat treated and hardened in strictly controlled ovens.

One of their specialty is to custom make surgical (medical) knife blades. Areas include orthopedic saw blades, ophthalmic surgery blades, general surgery, neurological surgeries, plastic surgery, all made from tungsten carbide. While they mainly focus on developing prototype blades for major medical device OEMs and producers, they also have some capability manufacture small to medium volume surgical blades and medical knives.

Freshly fallen snow is picturesque and beautiful. However, it never stays that way, because we have to trek out into it to carry on with our daily lives. If you want to take on the winter with renewed confidence, then the Retractable Spike Snow Boots will very likely be of use. These are a warm and soft pair of winter boots that have six 3-spike crowns of tungsten carbide hiding in the sole of the shoe. This material is harder than steel, yet slightly softer than a diamond.

Even with a nice pair of boots that have a lot of traction, the ice will still catch you off guard now and again. As the days go by, we’ll occasionally have higher temperatures which melt the snow, which later refreezes into ice. You can put out sidewalk salt all you’d like, but after a certain temperature, it doesn’t really matter anymore.

By turning a dial in the heel 360 degrees, the spikes will discharge, giving you a way to tread over the ice without acting like you’re walking on eggshells. The interior consists of a lambskin inner sole, and a leather upper. It is both breathable, and will make sure your toes stay toasty. This will cost you around $380, but will help you to keep from planting your rump meat in the snow on a daily occasion in the winter months.

“We chose to partner with Mr. Smith and DCI because we see tremendous opportunities ahead,” said Jeffery Christman, Managing Director of Rock Hill. “Two decades of positive results and a solid customer base help position DCI for strong growth. Moving forward, we plan to help Mr. Smith and his team streamline the operations, expand beyond current end markets into new ones and embrace new plating technologies, including the most recent addition tungsten carbide spray coating to its service offering. With limited competition in the arena, we see significant value enhancement opportunities ahead.”

“What struck me most about Rock Hill as an investment partner was their interest in partnering with us rather than taking over,” said Cliff Smith, Sr., Chairman of DCI. “They worked with us to develop a solid plan to streamline and consolidate our operations in order to better prepare us for significant growth and expansion. I’m confident that the future of DCI is on solid ground.”

 Rock Hill Capital Group (Rock Hill) has announced its investment in Oklahoma City-based Duracoatings Holdings, LLC (Duracoatings or DCI), the largest provider of chrome reworking and coating of downhole motor-related tools in the United States.

In 1993, Duracoatings was established by Cliff Smith, Sr. DCI continues to perform work in the metal finishings industry, providing electroplating, thermal spraying, grinding and polishing for the oil and gas industry, plus many other industries which deploy hydraulics, pumps, valves, and drilling tools.


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Sumitomo Electric has created a domestic recycling system, which completes all recycling processes of precious tungsten in Japan, by collecting scrap tungsten carbide inserts and rotary tools sorted by Toyota and reprocessing them as recycled tungsten carbide products.

Today, more and more super-hard, lightweight materials, such as titanium, Inconel® and new aluminum alloys, are desired in various industrial fields including aerospace, defense, energy, and transport. The hardness of these materials, however, inevitably creates a demand for more accurate and advanced machining, which is the most urgent issue in the metal-working industry in order to achieve a competitive edge in the global market.

Emphasizing environmental issues as one of the most important challenges for our business, Sumitomo Electric will continue to meet customer demands and spare no effort in reducing the environmental impact in all aspects of the life cycle of tungsten carbide tools: production, use, regrinding, and recycling.

Once upon a time, encountering rock formations during a bore could completely stall an horizontal directional drilling (HDD) operation. Back then, if rock was encountered, bores would be abandoned.

Fast forward to today and a time in which advancements in tooling technology and processes have made rock drilling commonplace and opened a vast market for both HDD contractors and utility service providers.
But even today, the right tools and processes can mean the difference between completing the job and completing it profitably — and there’s a lot of homework to be done before tool selection can begin.

“It’s important to gather as much information as possible about the soil conditions and rock formations along the bore path before you ever start,” says Sharewell HDD president Greg Wilson. He encourages contractors to take core samples, test the hardness of the rock and map formation changes on the bore plan, “so the driller will know when he’ll be entering and leaving different formations,” he says.

Additionally, make sure you have the right rig for the job. For the tooling to work as designed, it must be powered by a drilling rig with enough thrust and torque to turn the tooling properly and cut the hole efficiently. A proper drilling fluid program is also critical, as fluid must be pumped at a higher volume during rock bores in order to both clean the hole and provide the hydraulic power to operate some types of downhole equipment.

The latest model of smart pen looks and feels pretty much like a real, regular pen, and writes that way as well, with tungsten carbide ball as the ballpoint. Customers' average user might not even notice, as the weight and balance are great, and the motion and movement quite good. Filled with a decent cartridge, their Swiss-made tungsten-carbide ballpoint ink flows smoothly. As with all similar smartpens, the only slight annoyance is that you have to use special paper with the system. Fifty sheets are included and you can print or buy additional quite easily. The paper features nearly invisible dots that allow the pen to track exactly where it is on the page.

Unlike prior models, this one transmits them nearly instantly to a nearby device using Bluetooth wireless. Simply pair your iPhone or iPad with the pen, and you know have an instant way to capture and store your handwriting. Pen emails and immediately send them, or have your grocery lists saved for posterity. If you want, you can also convert your scrawls to useful text, using pretty accurate OCR (optical character recognition). We found it to be about 90% accurate, either while using cursive or otherwise- better than we expected! Any iOS 7 device will work, and though Android is not currently supported, the company claims that this model will be have compatibility forthcoming in 2014.

Allegheny Technologies Inc., on November 4, 2013, completed the sale of its tungsten materials business to Latrobe, PA-based wear-resistant products company Kennametal Inc. (KMT) for $605 million. The business unit, which produces tungsten powder, tungsten heavy alloys, tungsten carbide materials and tungsten carbide cutting tools, generated $338.6 million of total net revenues and $37.2 million of operating profit for the year ended Dec 31, 2012.

Allegheny Technologies Inc. originally had three main business segments: Flat-Rolled Products, High Performance Metals and Engineered Products. However, the company, in October 2013, announced the restructuring of its Engineered Products segment, including the integration of the specialty steel forgings business into ATI Ladish's forgings operations in the High Performance Metals division and the integration of the precision titanium and specialty alloy flat-rolled finishing business into ATI Allegheny Ludlum's specialty plate business in the Flat-Rolled Products segment. Other businesses that comprised the Engineered Products division have been classified as discontinued operations and include the tungsten materials business and the iron castings and fabricated components businesses.

Allegheny decided to divest its tungsten materials business so that it can focus more on its core businesses High Performance Metals and Flat-Rolled Products. The acquisition is also expected to increase Allegheny's financial flexibility and simplify its capital allocation and deployment.

Allegheny's Flat-Rolled Products segment produces, converts and distributes stainless steel, nickel-based alloys, titanium and titanium-based alloys, and specialty alloys in various product forms - plates, sheets, engineered strips and precision rolled strip products, as well as grain-oriented electrical steel sheets - to independent service centers and end-use customers. It serves chemical process, oil and gas, electrical energy, automotive, food equipment and appliances, machine and cutting tools, construction and mining, aerospace and defense, electronics, communication equipment and computer industries. In the segment, Allegheny owns a 60% interest in a Chinese joint venture company, Shanghai STAL Precision Stainless Steel Company Limited (STAL), which commenced commercial production in 2000. Baosteel Group owns the remaining 40%. Allegheny also owns a 50% interest in the industrial titanium joint venture known as Uniti LLC. Verkhnaya Salda Metallugical Production Association (VSMPO), the Russian producer of titanium, aluminum and specialty steel products owns the remaining 50% interest.

Allegheny's High Performance Metals segment produces, converts and distributes high performance alloys including nickel and cobalt-based alloys and super alloys titanium and titanium-based alloys exotic metals (such as zirconium, hafnium, niobium and nickel-titanium) and their related alloys and other specialty alloys primarily in long product forms, such as ingot, billet, bar, shapes and rectangles, rod, wire, seamless tube, and castings. It sells products directly to end-users in the aerospace and defense, chemical process industry, oil and gas, electrical energy and medical sectors. About 70% of the demand in the segment comes from the aerospace and defense market.

Allegheny recorded sales of roughly $5,032 million in 2012 with Flat-Rolled Products, High Performance Metals and Engineered Products segments accounting for 47%, 43% and 10%, respectively.


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Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd.,headquartered in Osaka, Japan, has started tungsten refining and scrap recycling operations in the United States. Sumitomo Electric Carbide Inc., a subsidiary of Sumitomo Electric, and New York Tungsten LLC, a subsidiary of Buffalo Tungsten Inc., a tungsten powder producer in the United States, have established a joint venture company, Niagara Refining LLC (NIRE), to produce tungsten trioxide (WO3) from raw ore as well as from recycled material at NIRE’s facility in Depew, N.Y.

Operations are set to begin in March 2014.

Until now, A.L.M.T Corp., a subsidiary of Sumitomo Electric, has imported WO3 from China and other countries to produce tungsten carbide powder as a raw material for carbide tools. A.L.M.T. also has been engaged in tungsten scrap recycling at itsToyama, Japan, plant since 2011.

With the start of NIRE’s operations, Sumitomo Electric will produce raw materials for tungsten by both refining tungsten ore from tungsten mines and by recycling scrap collected from the market.

Sumitomo Electric says it will accelerate its activities to facilitate a stable supply of tungsten raw materials through using WO3 produced by NIRE and tungsten carbide powder production by A.L.M.T. This will allow Sumitomo Electric to control the supply chain from raw materials all the way to the finished product, which will further strengthen its competitiveness and achieve synergy through cooperation within the group, according to the company.


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Sometimes finding a mineral deposit is about having found it once before. Cadillac Ventures (V.CDC) CEO Norman Brewster had brought the Burnt Hill tungsten/tin mine to test production in the early 1980’s at which point the price of tungsten collapsed. For 30 years little work was done on the deposit.

Located 110 kilometers north of Fredericton New Brunswick, the Burnt Hill area was purchased by Brewster and was joint ventured in 2007. Because the work on the area was historical Brewster explained, “We have to recreate the work I did in the 1980’s. Redo the bulk sample and redo the drilling”.

This would advance Cadillac to feasibility at Burnt Hill itself. However, on November 5, 2013, Cadillac announced that it had discovered a second mineral occurrence a Wolf Ridge, 3-6 kilometers away from the original Burnt Hill deposit. This second occurrence was discovered by the use of airborne data and trenching. The size of this occurrence is comparable in scale and grade to the original Burnt Hill deposit.

Brewster points out that the new occurrence is somewhat different from the Burnt Hill deposit as it contains much more tin. “That’s important because the tin market is a bigger market than the market for tungsten.” Tin is something of a stealth strategic metal as it is used in the solder which is used in electronic devices. (For example, an I-Pad uses between 1-3 grams of tin.)