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Where it is usedTungsten carbide uses: where it works and why
The main tungsten carbide uses are cutting tools, mining and construction tools, oil and gas drilling parts and wear parts, plus everyday items such as pen balls and tire studs. Each section gives the reason carbide gets the job, and the last shows the scrap each job leaves.
Metal cutting: inserts, drills and end mills
Cutting tools are carbide's biggest job, as the table above shows. A 2020 review found cemented carbides held half of the 2018 global cutting-tool market by tool material, ahead of high-speed steel (HSS), a tool steel carrying 1.5 to 20% tungsten.
An insert is a small replaceable tip screwed onto a steel holder for turning, milling, grooving, threading or drilling; ITIA says one tool can hold up to 300. Solid drills and end mills (cutters that cut with their sides as well as the tip) are ground from carbide rod. ITIA’s end mill example gets its final shape by grinding with diamond tools after sintering, the furnace step that turns the still porous pressed part into a dense body.
Why carbide here: it is harder than HSS and stays hard at the heat of the edge. A University of Pennsylvania lecture puts it at up to 92 HRA (the Rockwell A scale), about 80 HRC, against up to 65 HRC for hardened HSS, with extremely high hot hardness, and runs it at twice the surface speed of plain HSS as a rule of thumb. The same lecture rates its toughness poor, and a 2005 DOE plant report says a carbide end mill needs very high speeds and rigid tooling to perform fully. A grade is one carbide recipe, tuned mainly by its tungsten carbide grain size and cobalt content; ITIA puts metal-cutting grades at 0.5 to 5 micron grain and 3 to 12% cobalt by weight.
ITIA says about three-quarters of its transport segment is automotive, the single biggest tungsten consumer worldwide, and that carbide there goes mainly into machining and forming tools. More in carbide drill bits and grades and binders.
Sources: Rizzo et al., Materials 2020 (cutting-tool market, 2018 data); ITIA, Tungsten in Steel (December 2008); ITIA, Cemented carbides (June 2010); ITIA, Recycling of Tungsten part 1 (May 2018); UPenn IPD 501, Speeds and Feeds lecture; DOE Kansas City Plant, Evaluation of End Mill Coatings (2005); ITIA, Applications and Markets; ITIA, Properties of hardmetal.
Mining, tunnelling and road milling
In mining and construction, carbide is the part of the tool that meets rock or asphalt. ITIA's 2021 data sends 62% of this segment's tungsten into mining, most of it underground; tunnelling and road milling, equal in size, make up two-thirds of construction use.
The tools are steel bodies with carbide at the working end. A road-milling pick is a steel tooth with a carbide tip, a design a 2024 asphalt study calls common for its durability. Roller cone rock bits carry carbide buttons and inserts, a NIOSH roof-bolter study drilled with carbide spade bits of 1 inch and 1-3/8 inch, and in a 2026 simulation of a tunnel boring machine's disc cutter, the first row of carbide inserts starts the rock breaking.
Why carbide here: the job needs abrasion resistance and impact strength at once. ITIA says these grades commonly have coarse grains up to 20 microns and 6 to 10% cobalt by weight; extra-coarse grades for surface mining or hot rolling of metals typically carry 6 to 30%, as cobalt or a Co/Ni/Cr binder. More binder buys toughness at the cost of hardness, and WC-based hardfacing keeps the steel holder from wearing away under the tip.
Sources: ITIA, Cemented carbides (June 2010); ITIA, Applications and Markets; Materials 2024, asphalt milling picks; ITIA, Recycling of Tungsten part 1 (May 2018); NIOSH roof-bolter study, Min Metall Explor 2022; TBM cutter study, PMC 2026.
Oil and gas drilling
Most oil and gas wells are drilled with PDC bits, and much of a PDC bit is carbide. A 2024 Sandia report says these bits are "routinely used to drill the majority of oil and gas wells worldwide."
PDC means polycrystalline diamond compact: a synthetic diamond table bonded to a tungsten carbide disc, which is brazed onto the bit. Sandia says most bit bodies are sintered carbide, so each cutter can be set at a chosen angle, and domed carbide inserts on the face limit depth of cut. An ITIA-hosted review adds carbide nozzles and hardfacing layers.
What carbide faces here: abrasion and corrosion together. A 2024 study says the rotor of a mud pulser, the tool that sends downhole signals while drilling, is usually cemented carbide, and that solid particles and corrosive mud scour it for long periods, causing abrasive wear and electrochemical corrosion. USGS reads the weekly count of operating drilling rigs as a sign of demand for this carbide.
Sources: Sandia National Laboratories, SAND2024-13076; ITIA-hosted review, Int. J. Refractory Metals and Hard Materials; Zhang et al., Materials 2024 (mud pulser rotors); USGS Minerals Yearbook 2021, Tungsten.
Wear parts: dies, nozzles, seals and knives
Wear parts are built to resist wear rather than to cut, and carbide's first job was one. ITIA says the 1923 Schröter patent, filed in Berlin, was first applied as a drawing die for lamp wire; billions of kilometers of steel and copper wire now pass through carbide dies each year.
ITIA lists plungers, boring bars, compacting and high-pressure dies and punches, seal rings, pulverizing hammers, needles, feed rolls and chuck jaws, plus knives and slitters for paper, textiles and tape.
Why carbide here: wear resistance, set by the grade. Near-nano carbide, with grains under 200 nm (0.2 micron), goes into water jet nozzles at water pressures up to 4000 bar (about 58,000 psi). ITIA gives that tool a hardness of 2800 HV10 on the Vickers scale, the hard end of the 800 to 2800 HV10 span it gives for cemented carbides.
Plain tungsten carbide-cobalt is the general choice for wear parts. Where corrosion matters, ITIA says CoNiCr, NiCr, FeNiCo and pure nickel binders are also considered.
Sources: ITIA, Cemented carbides (June 2010).
Everyday uses of cemented carbide
Ballpoint pen balls are among the smallest carbide parts, under 1 g each, made at about 5 billion a year in ITIA’s 2010 count. NTP adds masonry drills, woodcutting tools, golf shoe studs and carbide-tipped saw blades; ITIA adds stump grinder bits.
Tire studs show why carbide gets picked. A 1999 Washington State DOT synthesis says carbide cores, first used in Scandinavia in the late 1950s, let the stud wear at about the same rate as the tread. A 2004 Alaska report put a typical car stud, a steel jacket around a carbide pin, at 1.9 g.
Not every hard saw tooth is carbide: some bimetal blades use M42 high-speed steel teeth. Carbide is generally 1.5 to 2 times as dense as steel, per the UPenn lecture, so the density weight check helps sort them.
Sources: ITIA, Cemented carbides (June 2010); NTP Report on Carcinogens background document, hard metals; WSDOT WA-RD 471.1, A Synthesis on Studded Tires (1999); University of Alaska Anchorage for Alaska DOT&PF (2004); ITIA, Tungsten in Steel (December 2008); UPenn IPD 501, Speeds and Feeds lecture.
Where used carbide comes from
Every one of these jobs ends in worn carbide, and the job decides the shape of the scrap.
| Use | Used carbide it leaves | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Metal cutting | Worn inserts, solid drills, end mills | An insert screwed onto a steel holder is 100% hardmetal; insert tungsten is typically above 80% |
| Tool grinding | Sludge, swarf, powder | Soft scrap, which mostly goes the chemical route |
| Road milling, mining | Worn picks, rock bit buttons | ITIA's example: a 24 g tip on a 280 g chisel, worn down to 14 to 17 g |
| Oil and gas | PDC bits, nozzles | Cutters sit on carbide discs brazed to the body |
| Wear parts, saw blades | Dies, punches, seal rings, knives, saw tips | Brazed parts need the solder removed before processing |
ITIA (2018) says the mining, construction and energy segment and the wear parts segment recycle less carbide than cutting tools, mainly because so many of their parts are attached, brazed on or cast into steel. Cutting inserts in industry already pass 95%.
A worn insert or a pick with a stub of tip left still holds its tungsten. We buy carbide in any form: send photos through the quote form, and see how shipping and pickup work on sell tungsten carbide.
Sources: ITIA, Recycling of Tungsten part 1 (May 2018); ITIA, Recycling of Tungsten part 2 (August 2019); USGS Open-File Report 2005-1028; Sandia National Laboratories, SAND2024-13076; ITIA, Supply and circularity.
Questions people ask
What is tungsten carbide used for?
Mostly cutting tools and wear-resistant parts. Inserts, drills and end mills cut metal; picks, buttons and PDC bits cut rock; dies, nozzles and seal rings resist wear. Pen balls and tire studs are the everyday uses.
Why is carbide used instead of steel for cutting tools?
It is harder than high-speed steel and keeps that hardness when the edge runs hot, so it can run at higher cutting speeds. It is also more brittle, so it wants a rigid machine and setup.
Is the carbide in these tools pure tungsten?
No. Tungsten carbide is a compound of tungsten and carbon, and these parts are cemented carbide: carbide grains bound by a metal such as cobalt. See tungsten vs tungsten carbide.
Do you buy used carbide from all of these industries?
Yes. Worn inserts, picks, PDC bits, dies and saw tips are all carbide in some form, and we buy carbide in any form, plus exotic metals and alloys. Ship it from anywhere in the US and we pay the shipping, or ask for a pickup in California, Arizona or Nevada. Start on the quote page.
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Have tungsten carbide to sell?
Tell us what form it is in and about how much it weighs, and add a few photos. Ship it from any state and we pay the shipping, or we pick up anywhere in California, Arizona and Nevada.