Development of Cemented Carbide Tool of Reduced Rare Metal Usage

Cemented carbides, including coated cemented carbides, account for 75% of the cutting tools market because of their features such as high hardness, toughness, and the responsiveness to iron, through the use of tungsten carbide for their main hard phases and cobalt for their bonding metals. The consumption of tungsten continues to increase as the amount of carbide tool production increases with the expansion of markets in developing countries. On the other hand, as Fig. 1 illustrates, tungsten is an eccentrically located material and China accounts for 60% of the reserves and 76% of the production for the world market.