Ed Huntress wrote:

"BottleBob" wrote in message
...

Ahh but the question IS; can tungsten carbide tooling (since it is an
intimate "mixture" of tungsten, carbon, and cobalt), be correctly
referred to as metallic or a metal since the finished product has
metallic properties?

Neither one, Bob. It's a metal-matrix composite. Think about reinforced
epoxy. 'Same thing.

Ed:

A metal-matrix-composite it may very well be. I've recently seen
tungsten carbide tooling called "hardmetal" quite frequently.

--
BottleBob
http://home.earthlink.net/~bottlbob