H.B. Carbide, Lewiston, Mich., a global leader in the blank tooling industry, was established in 1983 with the mission to deliver a superior customer experience with industry-leading custom and altered standard carbide blanks that provide consistency, reliability and advanced capabilities for your most demanding applications.
H.B. Carbide is a fully integrated manufacturer, starting from powder production through finished ground blank. We offer a comprehensive selection of grades to deliver high-performance, reliable near-net shaped blanks that address specialized customer application challenges across diverse industries.
Producing More Than
Shipping More Than
Manufacturing
Providing You
H.B. Carbide is a vertically integrated company that handles every facet of carbide production starting from highest quality raw materials — procured from long-established, reliable suppliers — to the production of the final finished ground blanks. We keep a sharp eye on quality throughout the process while meeting aggressive delivery times.
Tungsten carbide powder, cobalt and carbon are milled to create a homogenous material mix.
The carbide blend is evaluated for powder characteristics and hardness in our Test & Inspection Lab to ensure it meets the standards of each particular grade.
Used for the majority of the forms we produce, this approach is for diameters of 1” and larger. Powder is loaded into cans with rubber boots, sealed and then placed in an iso-static press using water pressure to push the powder together. The iso-press compacted bar is processed through a vacuum pre-sinter furnace cycle to semi-harden the material and allow it to be handled.
This approach is used to produce more near-net shapes from 0.050″ – .75″. It relies on a carbide powder binder system to create a pliable material, which is loaded into a press and pushed through a die to create various shapes that are then dried and pre-sintered.
Blanks and preforms outer diameters are completed on both CNC and manual machines. Coolant holes and flutes are completed on CNC machines.
The blanks and preforms are placed in a furnace that combines vacuum sintering and hot isostatic pressing to stabilize and densify the material. During this process, the forms shrink about 20% in size.
For customers who need it, we can add centerless and between center grinding to the process.
After sintering, forms and blanks run through non-destructive tests to determine indirect grain distribution assessment, cobalt content, density and powder flow ability, as well as destructive tests that evaluate micro-porosity and hardness. Plus, there is dimensional inspection of every component.
Excellent wear properties, abrasion resistance, medium grade, general purpose grade for cutting tools, drills, endmills, and reamers for finishing and semi-finishing and wear parts with little impact, EDM blanks, seal rings and knives.
Extremely hard material, high abrasion resistance, micro grain size grade, for finishing machining cutting tools, drills, endmills, reamers, and wear parts, with very little or no shock, EDM blanks, wire guides and sand blast nozzles.
Extremely hard material, high abrasion resistance, ultra-fine grain size grade, for finish machining cutting tools, drills, endmills, reamers, and wear parts, with very little or no shock, EDM blanks, wire guides, sand blast nozzles.
Exceptional performance in punch applications, Heat-resistant steels, Stainless steels, Non-ferrous metal alloys
Exceptional toughness/wear properties, Ideal for deep hole drilling
Bimodal grain structure offering excellent wear properties, Ideal for deep hole drilling
High Impact forming applications, Header dies, draw dies, stamping die details, Thread rolling, Ammunition dies
Med-/High-impact forming applications, Header dies, draw dies, stamping die details, Fastener forming dies, Ammunition dies
Low impact/light shock resistance, Capability for wide variety of forming applications, Ammunition dies, Light stamping
Steels, SS, non-ferrous varieties forming applications, Light stamping carbide die and nib deep draw, Fine blanking stamping dies, Ammunition dies
Excellent thermal cycling properties, Optimal braze adhesion, Non-cutting grade, Good toughness characteristics
Excellent wear properties, micro grain size grade, general purpose cutting tool grade for semi-finishing and finishing, drilling, endmills, reamers, stamping dies, punches, knoves and all types of cutting tools, will withstand slight shock, EDM blanks.
High wear, low to medium impact, micro grain size grade, for cutting tools, dies, knives, punches, rough tools, will withstand slight shock, EDM blanks, crush rolls, form rolls, coining dies.