Tungsten wire is used as filaments for lighting, electron tubes, electrodes, high-temperature furnace parts, and probe pins because it has the highest melting point among metals. Customers can select wires from a wide range of wire diameters, materials, and finishing methods for a variety of applications.
We also provide the highest level of high-purity tungsten wire in the world due to our integrated production and strictly controlled raw materials and processes.
Properties of Tungsten as Wire
To get from powder to wire, tungsten is pressed, sintered, swaged, drawn, and annealed at high temperatures in hydrogen atmospheres. As a result, you might believe that the metal’s properties change significantly during this process.
Tungsten wire has good electrical and thermal conductivity, which explains why it is widely used in lighting, electronic devices, and thermocouples.
The majority of tungsten wire sold today is doped, which means it has gone through an additional process that gives the wire non-sag properties. Doped tungsten wire can be ductile at both room temperature and extremely high operating temperatures.
While doping was initially developed to improve the use of tungsten wire in incandescent light bulb filaments, it is still used in tungsten wire manufacturing today and is advantageous for other high-temperature applications such as industrial ovens and vacuum metalizing.
Furthermore, some companies, including Metal Cutting Corporation, provide undoped tungsten wire for applications requiring the highest purity. Metal Cutting currently offers the purest tungsten wire available, which is 99.99% pure and made from 99.999% pure powder.
Unlike ferrous metal wires, which can be annealed to a wide range of tensile strengths, pure tungsten wire’s tensile strength varies only with diameter. Customized annealing schedules cannot significantly alter the strength.
However, tungsten wire of the same diameter from different manufacturers will have slightly different tensile strength values. This is because their tungsten wire manufacturing processes differ, such as pressed bar size, swaging equipment, and drawing, reduction, and annealing schedules.
