Polycrystalline Diamond (PCD) tools & Tungsten Carbide Tools

www.primatooling.co.uk

Prima Tooling

4 - 6 Tallon Road

Hutton Industrial Estate

Brentwood

Essex

CM13 1TJ

United Kingdom

Tel: +44 1277 260340

Fax: +44 1277 260341

Standard tools or 1-off specials can be tipped to produce Polycrystalline Diamond (PCD) tools, Tungsten Carbide (TCT) tools or High Speed Steel tools (HSS).

PCD tools

Prima Tooling produce a wide range of tools and once you buy PCD tooling from them, you'll find that they are happy to give advice on the installation and running of this tooling. And they will back this up with reliable maintenance, the complete service.

PCD drills are polycrystalline diamond tools that have been popular in the aerospace industry because of their long life cycles

Tungsten carbide tools, first developed in Germany in the 1920s, produced such advanced steel-milling grades they revolutionised most industries by the 1930s, when carbides containing both titanium and tantalum were introduced. A variety of hard metals were then further developed in response to the demands of the emerging steel, mining, and manufacturing industries.

A composite material itself, carbide, in combination with the binder cobalt, can be formulated for specific hardness and bending strength ratios. Now, by including chromium, nickel, and other metals to carbide formulas, developers can custom-produce tool base materials according to very specific user requirements and preferences for hardness, toughness, and wear, as well as the ability to accommodate precise cutting geometries. Most recently, innovators have increased cutting edge sharpness substantially by using smaller grain size, and by controlling grain growth during the sintering process (Forming a coherent bonded mass by heating metal powders without melting).

TCT Tools

TCT tools now reduce friction along the entire tool surface, lowering cutting edge temperatures and greatly extending tool life, to the equivalent or exceeding that of PCD tools. Diamond coating has always enabled the tool to smoothly and quickly penetrate aerospace composite materials, for example, without causing delamination, which is the separation of layers within the composite material.

HSS Tools

There is a trade-off between tool life and production speed.

High speed steel tools have always presented an opportunity for designers as time has gone on to balance the time the components being processed are heat treated, to balance high material hardness against cutting time and tool fatigue. The competitiveness of tools is rooted in this equation.