A Brief History Of Tungsten Carbide

Since 1893, German scientists have made tungsten carbide by heating tungsten trioxide and carbon together in an electric furnace to a high temperature, and tried to use its high melting point, high hardness and other characteristics to make drawing dies, so as to replace diamond materials. However, due to its brittleness, easy cracking and low toughness, WC has not been applied in industry. In the 1920s, German scientist Karl schroter found that pure tungsten carbide can not adapt to the intense stress changes formed in the drawing process. Only by adding low melting point metal into WC can the blank have a certain toughness without reducing the hardness. In 1923, schroter first put forward the patent of powder metallurgy method, that is, tungsten carbide is mixed with a small amount of iron group metals (iron, nickel, cobalt), then pressed into shape and sintered in hydrogen above 1300 ℃ to produce hardness alloy.