AVAILABLE IN MANY FORMS
Future Alloys can provide the Highest Quality Pure Tungsten materials in many forms including:
Tungsten Block, Rod, Bar, Strip, Sheet, Plate, Wire, Cube, Crucibles and Ingots.
We can supply be-spoke sizes and our sales team have many years of experience and will be able to offer you technical advice and information on all the materials we deal with.
CUSTOM MACHINING
Do you have a special application for Tungsten that needs custom machining?
Special cutters, feeds and cutting fluids are essential to complete tungsten machining without a detrimental effect to the material.
Future alloys have all the experience and equipment necessary to precision machine Tungsten and Tungsten Alloys to the highest specifications.
Please be as specific as possible, for example:
“Please quote for 8 off, 30mm diameter pure tungsten rods, in 1m lengths”
Tungsten is a very dense, hard and strong material which is able to maintain its properties at high temperatures. It has excellent corrosion resistance and is easily alloyed with other metals. Some of its key attributes include:
Name: Tungsten
Symbol: W
Type: Refractory Metal
Atomic Number: 74
Atomic Mass: 183.84 amu
CAS No. 7440337
Melting Point: 3410 °C (3683.15 K, 6170.0 °F)
Boiling Point: 5900 °C (5933.15 K, 10220.0 °F)
Hardness: 7.5 Mohs
Density @ 293 K: 19.3 g/cm3
Thermal Expansion: 4.50 µm/(m·K)
Thermal conductivity: 173.00 W/m·K
Number of Neutrons: 110
Classification: Transition Metal
Crystal Structure: Cubic
Pure Tungsten is a very hard, silvery white coloured metal and has unique properties, including a melting point of 3,410 degrees Celsius (the highest of all the elements), a boiling point of 5,900 degrees Celsius, and it is one of the heaviest of all the elements. It has the lowest coefficient of thermal expansion and the highest tensile strength of all the pure metals and an ability to maintain this strength at high temperatures. Tungsten has inertness to oxygen, acids and alkalis, and the lowest vapor pressure. The element is found in several ores, the main ones for industrial use being Wolframite and Scheelite.
Consequently Tungsten has a very wide range of applications and is used in many industrial sectors including the electronics, semiconductor, automotive, aviation, aerospace, nuclear, motorsport, chemical, medical and defense industries. Tungsten’s ability to withstand high temperatures make it ideal for lamp filaments, furnace components, welding electrodes and other high temperature applications. Tungsten is extremely hard, tough and durable making it ideal to use for machining other materials. Its high density makes it a key material where space is a premium such as aerospace and motor sport applications.
Tungsten is among the most important components in modern integrated circuitry. All advanced IC chips depend on tungsten contacts to connect the transistors and interconnecting layers. Tungsten-copper based heat sinks are also used as base plates for microelectronic devices, IC packages, for optoelectronics and magnetrons for microwave ovens.
Tungsten is practically the only material used for electron emitters as it has the advantage of an extremely low vapour pressure even at high temperatures. This property is also important for electrical contact materials. While more conductive metals like copper or silver evaporate (erode) under the conditions of an electric arc, tungsten withstands these. Tungsten electrodes are also used for ignition contact breakers, voltage regulators and safety switches. Tungsten is used for light bulb filaments and about 4% of the annual tungsten production is consumed by the lighting industry.
The density and strength of tungsten alloys ensure they are extensively used for radiation shielding applications. Precision engineered tungsten components and high density tungsten alloys are used in a variety of medical applications, including multi-leaf collimators and medical isotope production, radiation transportation and containment and shielding, syringe shields, lead shielding replacement components, oncology instruments and treatment systems, filaments in X-ray tubes and electron microscopes.
Tungsten alloy is used in the aerospace industry for numerous applications, including propeller weights, anti-flutter and anti-vibration components and ballasts. It can be found on many kinds of aircraft, and is commonly employed as a way of balancing the weight of the structure or helping to reduce vibration when flying.
Tungsten alloy offers advantages over other metals such as lead. Its high density makes it the best option for cases in where a lot of weight is required to fill a small space, such as in the case of an aircraft ballast. Tungsten alloys enable the physical size of components to be reduced, offering greater aircraft balance / ballast weight distribution. Tungsten provides vibration dampening capabilities, making it the perfect choice for such applications as helicopter blades, aircraft ballast weights, missile components, and more. Machinable high-density tungsten alloys also offer unrivaled stabilisation properties and so may be used in mechanically stressed positions without the need for additional fabrication and encasement, hence its use in rocket engine nozzles.
Tungsten products are extensively used in motorsport and also in the automotive industry as a whole, especially in tooling and die cast applications. Skid plates produced from tungsten alloys give greater protection than traditional materials. Chassis weights designed to balance and lower the car’s center of gravity made from high-density Tungsten alloys take up significantly less room than traditional lead materials.
Tungsten’s density and toughness make it a premium material choice for ammunition such as bullets, warheads, and armour. Tungsten projectiles can penetrate thick steel armour and cause extreme, but very localised devastation.
Other aerospace applications like tungsten alloy aerospace balance include mass balances in satellites and in gyroscopic controls for missiles and avionics.
In the oil and natural gas industry sensitive equipment used to detect oil and natural gas deposits utilises the radiation shielding properties of tungsten alloys to protect them. High density alloys can also be used for casing materials in down hole logging where casings must be strong enough to withstand intense hydrostatic pressure and heavy enough to sink through mud.
Other applications for Tungsten include high temperature furnaces, production of glass, rock and ceramic wool for insulation, crystal production, vacuum sputtering, and heating. Its hardness and density also make Tungsten ideal for producing heavy metal alloys such as copper tungsten which are used in high-speed railways, high precision equipment, electrodes for electrical-discharge machining (EDM), electroplating. It’s used as reinforcement in metal, ceramic and plastic and industrial composites.
It’s used in the chemical industry as a catalyst. Seamless cylindrical tungsten crucibles are used for the growing of Single Crystals, required for semiconductors, LEDs, X-ray detectors, data storage or optical media.
Tungsten is used in welding applications, notably in gas tungsten arc welding (also known as tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding).
The finest darts, horseshoes and golf clubs all take advantage of high-density tungsten to achieve perfect weight and balance.
Due to its conductive properties and relative chemical inertness, tungsten is also used in electrodes, and in the emitter tips in electron beam instruments that utilise field emission guns, such as electron microscopes.
Tungsten’s high-thermal conductivity and ability to maintain superior physical properties even at extreme temperatures make it ideal for die casting, extrusion and other high-temperature tooling applications.
Its hardness, strength and durability make it ideal for shaping and processing other metals in the toolmaking industry, for mining, cutting tool bits, and other cutting and forming applications.
Tungsten alloys are used extensively in ordnance applications and large container inspection devices. They are also used in airport security in package, luggage and personal x-ray devices, and for structural analysis of materials.