Cubic and cermet grades

Optimized performance at extreme working conditions

Cubic and cermet grades are one of the latest developments for Hyperion Materials & Technologies. This group consists of grades containing a significant proportion of g-phase (i.e., TiC, TaC, NbC, etc.) together with WC and Co.

The main features of the g-phase are good thermal stability, resistance to oxidation, and high-temperature wear. These grades are designed to provide a favorable balance of wear resistance and toughness in can tooling applications that generate high temperatures and entail close contact with ferrous materials. These conditions arise in metal cutting or high-pressure sliding contact situations involving the welding and galling of surfaces.

Other common terms for these grades are the “can tooling”, “metal-cutting”, or “mixed-crystal” grades. In the extreme case, these grades are designed without any WC phase. Such hard metal grades are called cermets and give a unique combination of high-temperature hardness, chemical wear resistance, and low density. Cermets are traditionally avoided for wear parts because of being more brittle than standard WC-Co grades. New developments have allowed toughness to be improved significantly, and cermets are now applied in a number of demanding applications from advanced engineering components to high-performance metal sawing blades.