On Mon, 9 Jan 2012 08:35:07 -0500, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

In article , huntres23
says...

On Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:26:36 +0000, Ted Frater
wrote:

Jim Wilkins wrote:
"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
...
...
Not..not a bad idea. But most carbide endmills are pretty fragile...they
dont have nickle as an alloy, as I recall

Ill ponder on that one. I have access to large (busted) carbide endmills
occasionally and can come up with the stock.

Gunner

Then again the carbide in masonry bits, rock drills and log skidder saws is
pretty tough.

jsw


TC is a great material for all sorts of tough jobs,
BUT
will someone correct me if im wrong,?
isnt this material made by powder technology then sintred ? to shape?
then ground with diamond to set the cutting angles

Right.

so if youve a suitable sized piece to make a ring how are you going to
machine it?

Someone mentioned EDM. It's very slow in carbide, but it is done.

the only thing harder is diamond.
This material is a bit outside of my tech field.

Ted.

It is not practical to machine or shape carbide at home, unless you
have a pretty good EDM.

How about using a lapidary rig and diamond abrasive?


Note from the discussion above that the suggestion is to carve a ring
out of a solid piece of carbide. I don't know how much diamond that
would take, but my guess is that it would make a down payment and a
few monthly payments on a nice new truck. g

Diamond is great for sharpening and honing carbide tools. Using it to
drill and bore a hole for your finger, and to shape the outside of a
part, sounds a little over the top.

FWIW, silicon carbide will grind carbide, too. I don't know if it
actually cuts the tungsten carbide itself, or strips it out of the
metal matrix. It uses up a lot of silicon carbide wheel life and it
doesn't cut the tungsten carbide very cleanly.

But I don't think that's practical, either.

EDM has been used for cutting tungsten carbide since the mid-'70s.
Some wirecut machines are optimized for it, but they're pretty slow.
Still, it does work, and it's used to make practically all of the
leadframe dies in existence, as well as dies for most small electronic
bits punched with carbide dies in high-speed presses.

Any way you do it, it would be exorbitantly expensive to carve a WC
ring out of the solid.

--
Ed Huntress