Cemented Carbide Insert

Cemented carbide, also known as tungsten carbide, is a relatively precious material which is critical to many manufacturing processes. Most metal machining processes use cemented carbide inserts as tool tips, as cemented carbide has excellent hardness and heat resistance properties ideal for drilling, boring, shaping and forming metal workpieces. Most modern face mills, lathe tools and end mills use these cutting tools.

The only downside of using cemented carbide inserts for such a wide range of machining processes is that the tungsten material used in creating tungsten carbide alloys is both scarce and expensive and cemented carbide inserts are typically treated as disposable materials, even though only the cutting edges of the inserts are worn when they're disposed.