Congolese warlords and unethical U.S. corporations will be the big winners if U.S. President Donald Trump goes ahead with a reported plan to suspend the restrictions on “conflict minerals” from Central African war zones, human-rights groups say.

For the last 20 years China has been the world's largest consumer of tungsten. Over this period its share of world tungsten use has increased substantially; from just under 30% in 1996 to nearly 60% in 2016.

In case you are wondering, tungsten is the new gold! Tungsten carbide wedding bands have gained prominence in the past few years as a result of its unique features and all the sophisticated wedding band designs crafted out of tungsten.
Tungsten has very unique features that make it one of the best metals for designing men’s wedding bands. Pure tungsten is difficult to craft with, so tungsten carbide is the metal used in all the tungsten jewelry. Here are some qualities of tungsten carbide wedding bands:

1.Highly durable
Tungsten is a very strong metal and its name was coined from two Swedish words; tung and sten, which mean a heavy stone. True to this translation, tungsten is a very strong and a heavy metal. This strength contributes to the durability of any item designed out of the metal. Though this makes tungsten carbide brittle, there are very few cases of broken wedding bands reported.
This durability also makes tungsten carbide wedding bands scratch resistant meaning that even after wearing this ring for over a decade, it will still look as good as new.

2.Ability to withstand heat
As a result of its strength, tungsten carbide can withstand extremely high temperatures and it doesn’t expand at temperatures which normal metals expand.

3.Resistant to corrosion
While wearing your wedding band, you may find yourself touching some acidic compounds, even though this could be a concern when wearing gold or any other metal, it isn’t when wearing tungsten carbide wedding bands. Tungsten carbide’s resistance prevents your finger from turning green because it doesn’t react with the acid.



























4.Hypoallergenic
When looking for wedding bands, most people look at the allergy properties of a metal. This is because a big population is allergic to metals and it could be annoying to start scratching your fingers within days or even on the wedding day because you are massively allergic to the wedding band metal.
As a result, and to prevent any of these embarrassing things from happening, tungsten carbide wedding bands come highly recommended as they are totally hypoallergenic. Some of the tungsten carbide wedding bands are available on Tungsten Rings.com.

5.They can be styled
Even though it is impossible to resize tungsten carbide wedding bands, there are many stylish designs that are applicable to these wedding bands. Most exotic inlays are found on tungsten wedding bands and you can also get unique finishes and textures on these wedding bands. They can also be used alongside another metal like titanium resulting in unique wedding bans variations.

6.Color variety
Besides the normal grey tungsten carbide wedding bands, you can also get second generation tungsten carbide wedding bands that are black. Since there has been a higher demand for darker and more masculine wedding bands, the black tungsten carbide wedding bands have been flying off shelves. You should however, ensure that the black band has a scratch resistant inlay.

In conclusion, tungsten carbide wedding bands are taking the market by storm. As an alternative wedding band material preferred by many men, it is relatively expensive but the price you pay for the band is totally reasonable. Other alternative metals include palladium, titanium, cobalt, meteorite, ceramic, or the stainless steel Damascus.

Cemented carbide, which consists of fine particles of carbide cemented into a composite by a binder metal, is an extremely hard material frequently used in mechanical and automotive engineering and the building materials industry. Excitingly for those industries, researchers have now managed to produce 3D printed cemented carbide tools using a binder jetting 3D printing technique. According to the researchers, these 3D printed tools are of comparable quality to those produced using conventional methods, and can be made into more complex shapes.

As an expert in the field of hard metals, researcher has for decades developed ceramic carbides by means of uniaxial or cold isostatic dry pressing, extrusion and injection molding, and shape cutting. These methods were employed to produce reliable cutting, drilling, pressing, and stamping tools made of tungsten carbide. Despite the reliability of those tools, however, Fraunhofer IKTS still faced a problem when it needed to create complex geometries, such as helical or meandering cooling ducts inside a component. These features could only be implemented at a high cost, and were often discarded altogether.

By developing a 3D printed method for cemented carbide tools, which is now able to create such designs with ease. It is known that through resource-saving and tool-free 3D printing, even complex, individualized ceramic geometries can be realized quickly.

The particular 3D printing method used by the researchers are form of binder jetting. During this process, powders or granules of a ceramic hard material, such as cemented carbide tools, are deposited layer by layer and wetted by the print head using a binding material made of cobalt and nickel or iron. This binding material acts as an adhesive between the layers of powder. The researchers aimed to get produce entirely dense components with good mechanical properties, and were even able to selectively adjust the flexural strength, toughness, and hardness of the 3D printed parts by varying the proportion of binder in the carbide: the lower the proportion of binder, the harder the component.

The prototypes manufactured have a binder content of twelve and seventeen percent by weight, and show a structure comparable to conventionally manufactured tools. Through the use of 3D printed for the production of complex green bodies and subsequent sintering under conventional sintering conditions, they achieve components with a typical carbide structure at one hundred percent density. Moreover, it is possible to set a homogeneous cobalt distribution achieving a comparable quality to conventionally produced high-performance tools. 3D printed cemented carbide tools will present at the World Congress & Exhibition.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has issued an order for the resumption of tungsten production in Russia, with the aim to ensure its regular supplies for the needs of the domestic industrial production.

Global Tungsten Carbide Market Research Report

The MRS research group tungsten carbide market report by QY Research represents an inclusive evaluation of the tungsten carbide market and comprises considerable insights, historical data, facts, and statistical and industry-validated data of the global market. Additionally, it consists of estimated data that is evaluated with the help of suitable set of methodologies and assumptions. The MRS Research Group report by QY Research highlights informative data and in-depth analysis of tungsten carbide market and its corresponding segments that are based on technology, geography, and applications.

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As a successful business man without political experience, Trump’s taking office is sure to be a fresh new look to America and will affect the world politics and economy in a new era.

The tungsten market started off with low prices at the beginning of 2016, a theme that seemed consistent throughout most of the year. Tungsten’s price has remained below $200 MTU, and it appears as though it’s been that way through to December.

Despite producing some of the world’s most spectacular infrastructure and sending astronauts into space, China has finally overcome a technological obstacle that has vexed Premier Li Keqiang: the ability to produce a decent ballpoint pen using domestically-made materials and components.

Li has long said that the fact China could not make the high-grade steel and precision machinery required to make the key component of the pens – the metal ball and its casing – reflected badly on Chinese manufacturing in general, state media reported.

Now, after five years of trial and error, Taiyuan Iron and Steel, one of the country’s biggest stainless steelmakers, has worked out the appropriate mix of alloys for high-performance stainless steel and to extrude it into a wire feedstock just 2.3mm thick.

Stationery manufacturers in China produce 38 billion ballpoint pens every year, but make less than 0.1 yuan on each pen, despite spending millions of dollars importing steel used to make the pen tips, at 120,000 yuan (US$17,000) per ton.

"The stainless steel used to make pen tips was all imported from Japan," said Xu Jundao, manager of Beifa Group, one of China's largest pen makers.

Though making a ballpoint pen may seem straightforward, producing a tiny tip with fluent writing effects requires over 20 processes. With machine precision down to the nearest micrometer, requirements for the quality of steel are high as it should be easy to cut but not liable to crack.

Tungsten carbide, as the high hardness material with well corrosion resist property, is an ideal material for ballpoint pen tips. It may have prosperous application in this field in the future with the improvement of manufacture technology.

In recent years, a variety of new tool materials endless, but tungsten carbide cutting tools will still be widely used in the future for a long period of time, it is necessary to study the development of new materials preparation technology to further improve and increase the tungsten carbide tool material’s cutting performance.

The strength and abrasion resistance of tungsten carbide cutting tools can be improved by refinement of hard phase grain size, increase of hard phase inter-granular surface area and enhancement of inter-granular bonding force. When the WC grain size reduced to sub-microns, the hardness, toughness, strength, wear resistance, etc. can be increased, and the required temperature can be fully densified. General tungsten carbide grain size is 3 - 5μm, fine-grained tungsten carbide grain size is 1--1.5μm (micron), ultra-fine tungsten carbide grain size can be up to 0.5μm (Micron, nanoscale).

As the grain refinement process is still not mature enough, so in the sintering process of tungsten carbide sintering is easy to grow into coarse grains, and grain growth will lead to the general strength of the material decreased, a single coarse WC grains are often Causing an important factor in material fracture.