Cemented Carbides – a Success Story

After WW2, a huge market opened in the growing economies and cemented carbides contributed as tool materials and construction parts to their industrial development. Today, cemented carbides are the workhorses in all areas of the manufacturing industries: no factory without cemented carbide tools; no production of glass bottles, aluminium cans or plastic tubes which has not benefited from these hard and wear resistant materials; no steel or copper wire or tube drawn without them; and no advanced manufacturing system without relying on their properties, innovation potential, productivity and reliability. Starting from the first application as drawing die for the production of lamp wire used in the OSRAM workshops (Fig. 1), the application of cemented carbides has become universal and includes metal cutting, machining of wood, plastics, composites, soft ceramics, chipless forming (hot and cold), mining and construction, structural parts, wear parts, and military components.