Carbide is an alloy material made of a hard compound of refractory metal and bonding metal through the powder metallurgy process. It has the general features of high hardness, high wear resistance, high elastic modulus, high compressive strength, good chemical stability, low impact toughness, and thermal and electrical conductivity are similar to those of iron and its alloys.

Classification of Carbide

1. Tungsten and cobalt carbide: the main components are tungsten carbide (WC) and cobalt binder (Co).

2. Tungsten-titanium-cobalt carbide: the main components are tungsten carbide, titanium carbide (TiC), and cobalt.

3. Tungsten-titanium-tantalum (niobium) carbide: the main components are tungsten carbide, titanium carbide, tantalum carbide (or niobium carbide), and cobalt. This kind of carbide is also called universal carbide.

Among them, tungsten carbide is the type with the largest output and the most extensive use and is also used in mining tools such as rock drill bits.

Carbide drill bits are mainly used in rock drilling and other working environments and are installed in rock drills and air pressure DTH equipment. It is necessary to install the coarse crystal WC-CO alloy drill bit with high hardness and toughness on the rock drill to effectively break all kinds of high hardness rocks.

The wear of carbide drill bits is mainly impacting cracking and impact fatigue. Under the impact energy, the contact between the drill bit and the rock is born to high compressive stress. The compressive strength of carbide is very high, and it is still competent for this compressive stress. However, the contact between the drill bit and the rock, there are some uncontacted or poor contact places, resulting in high tensile stress and shear stress. When these two stresses exceed the strength limit of the alloy, it will cause partial collapse and desquamate of the drill bit. If the toughness of the carbide is high, this condition can be avoided prematurely. The carbide toughness is affected by Co content and the mean degree of freedom of the Co phase. Based on this, coarse-grained WC-Co alloy drill bits are widely used in the rock drilling industry.

In summary, carbide drill bits have the following advantages:

1. Carbide composite chip drill bits have high rock breaking efficiency, good overall firmness, strong impact ability, radial wear resistance, stable quality, no lower diameter limit, high alloy utilization rate, and recyclability.

2.   carbide button bits have free button arrangement, no upper diameter limit, and no need for grinding, which is conducive to speeding up the project progress and improving the working conditions of workers. It has the characteristics of high efficiency and low consumption.

With the development of social industrialization, When drilling rock, the wear resistance and service life of carbide drill bits are much higher than those made of other materials, which also reduces the workload of handling. The application of carbide in rock drilling tools has also promoted the replacement of rock drilling carbide to a certain extent and improved the development of rock drilling tools.