How does cemented carbide perform under extreme cutting conditions?
Publish Time: 2025-02-17
As a high-performance cutting material, cemented carbide plays a pivotal role in the field of metal cutting due to its high hardness, wear resistance and red hardness. Especially under extreme cutting conditions, cemented carbide shows unique advantages and outstanding performance.During high-speed cutting, cemented carbide tools can maintain high hardness and wear resistance, thanks to the large amount of carbides with high melting point and high hardness in its composition. These carbides, such as tungsten carbide (WC) and titanium carbide (TiC), are sintered with metal binders (such as cobalt Co) to form a hard matrix, which enables cemented carbide tools to maintain sharp and stable cutting edges when rotating and feeding at high speeds. This performance is particularly significant when cutting hard materials with a hardness of up to 50HRC. The cutting speed of cemented carbide tools can be several to dozens of times higher than that of high-speed steel.Cemented carbide also performs well in high-temperature cutting environments. Its red hardness enables cemented carbide to maintain high hardness at high temperatures of 900℃ to 1000℃, thus ensuring cutting efficiency and processing quality. In contrast, many other cutting materials soften rapidly at high temperatures, resulting in a significant decrease in cutting performance. This characteristic of cemented carbide gives it an irreplaceable advantage in extreme conditions such as machining high-temperature alloys and difficult-to-machine materials.However, cemented carbide also faces some challenges under extreme cutting conditions. For example, its bending strength and impact toughness are relatively low, which to a certain extent limits its application in conditions with large impact loads or complex cutting conditions. In addition, cemented carbide tools are also prone to thermal cracks and wear during cutting, especially in continuous cutting or heavy cutting, and special attention should be paid to cooling and lubrication to reduce tool wear and extend tool life.In order to give full play to the performance advantages of cemented carbide under extreme cutting conditions, it is crucial to choose the right cemented carbide grade. Different cemented carbide grades have different combinations of hardness, wear resistance and toughness, and should be reasonably selected according to the specific cutting object, cutting conditions and cutting parameters. At the same time, the use of advanced cutting technologies and processes, such as high-speed cutting and dry cutting, can also further improve the cutting efficiency and processing quality of cemented carbide tools.In summary, cemented carbide has shown excellent performance under extreme cutting conditions and is an indispensable and important material in the field of modern metal cutting.
