Through decades of efforts, the production technology, output, and application scope of cemented carbide have been developed. Because the consumption of cemented carbide for rock drilling is about 30% of the total amount, rock drilling tools are an important application field of cemented carbide products.

The so-called rock drilling tool is a tool that drills cylindrical holes for filling explosives in the rock to achieve the purpose of blasting the rock. It is usually to call tools used by rock drill rock drilling tools and drilling tools for that of drilling large apertures used by down-the-hole drilling rigs and roller cone drilling rigs. In the field of rock drilling and blasting, both of them are rock drilling tools.

Since there are many types of rock drilling tools, today we summarize the types of rock drilling tools that mainly use cemented carbide.

1. Cemented carbide for drill bits of light rock drills

Light rock drills refer to manually operated rock drilling machines. Its weight is no more than 35kg. Using manual hand-held or air leg support as the working platform, the impact energy and propulsion force of rock drilling are relatively small. Generally, the rock drilling tools used in light rock drilling machines include H19 mm, H22 mm, and H25 mm hexagonal integral drill rods and tapered drill rods, equipped with 38~42 mm chisel bits, tapered button bits, and a small number of cross bits. At present, the bits for light rock drills are the drill tool that consumes rock drilling cemented carbide most. The cemented carbide for the chisel bit and the tapered button bit included.

2. Cemented carbide for hydraulic drill bit

It mainly includes cemented carbide for excavation rigs drill bits, cemented carbide for underground mining rigs button bits, and cemented carbide for open-cutting drilling tools drill bits.

2.1 Cemented carbide for excavation rigs drill bits

In the underground mines excavation, it is necessary to use different rock drilling and blasting techniques to excavate roadways according to the conditions of the mine source. The roadway with a small cross-sectional area usually drills 38-42 mm holes, mainly using H22mm tapered drill rod and chisel, cross, or button bit. When excavating the roadway with a large cross-sectional area, a blast hole with a diameter of more than 43 mm and the hydraulic excavation drilling rig are used for rock drilling.

2.2 Cemented carbide for underground mining rigs button bits

This kind of rock drilling tools are used on pneumatic guide drills and hydraulic mining vehicles to drill deep holes and supporting holes in underground mining and blasting.

2.3 cemented carbide for drill bits of open-cutting drill

Open-cutting drilling tools are used for crawler-type full-hydraulic open-cut rock drilling rigs, drilling medium and large aperture blast holes in projects such as surface mining development, building stone mining, and hydropower engineering dam excavation.

These kinds of rock drilling tools are of large market demand, and the button bits used in drilling rigs are also the most productive one.

3. Cemented carbide for down-the-hole rock drilling tools

Among the product categories produced by the drilling tool enterprises, in addition to the drilling tools for light rock drills, the products developing fastest are the down-the-hole tools for DTH drilling machines. According to the different compressed air pressure, DTH drilling tools include two types: low-pressure DTH drilling tools and medium and high-pressure DTH drilling tools, and the corresponding DTH drill bits have different requirements for rock drilling cemented carbide. Because of the high surface mining efficiency of high-pressure DTH drilling rigs, it is widely used in large-diameter rock drilling and blasting sites, which has a considerable market.

4. Cemented carbide for roller cone bits

Roller cone rock drilling tools include roller cone button bits, steel-tooth roller bits, and drill rods for roller-drilling rigs. It is estimated that the annual consumption of alloy is about 200 tons. The medium tungsten carbide powder is used to produce a carbide button.

5. Cemented carbide for cutting picks

Cutting picks include soft coal seam cutter button, medium hard coal seam pick button, cold milling planing button for highway repair machinery, cutting picks for mine leveling machinery, etc. Among them, coal mining picks and surface, same below mining picks are tools for open-pit mining equipment or shearers to cut coal blocks, and their performance directly affects the efficiency, energy consumption, coal dust size, and lump coal rate of the mining unit.

Tungsten is one of the scarce and rare resources in the world, and the cemented carbide for rock drilling is the product with larger usage and faster consumption cycle in tungsten carbide. Therefore, enterprises can correctly understand the performance of cemented carbide for rock drilling and master the requirements of various types of rock drilling tools for cemented carbide, which can further improve its quality. It is of great significance to the rational utilization of tungsten resources.