annealed tungsten?

Tig electrodes and end mills and other cutteing tools are tungstan carbide, they have carbon in them. Light bulb filament are pure tungstan, or at least not a carbide. Les

TIG electrodes are not tungsten carbide. They are pure tungsten or tungsten alloyed with small amounts of Thorium, Lanthanum, Cerium, Zirconium, ...

Ted

Try these sites;

Richard

It says pure tungsten is 99.5 percent tungsten, leaveing .5 percent for carbon to make carbide. I have machined a block of pure tungsten, it was not hard like an electrode. So I still think it is tungsten carbide. Les

Get over it, it's Tungsten, pure enough.

-- David Algie

Good attatude! is that what you would have a teacher tell our kids when the question somthing? Gee, I'm so sorry my wanting to learn somthing has you in such a bad mood. Also showing your ignorance of metals, .5 percent of carbon makes iron steel. But I bet you "got over" class.

Les

in my original post i meant to imply the difference when it came to TIG welding. where/why would one used an annealed tungsten electrode as opposed to an unannealed one? and when i purchase tungsten for TIG welding, is it common to supply it annealed or unannealed state?

i've purchased tungsten before, but never noticed what state they were in. i suppose i'm only asking because they're available from the welding supply.

thanks again

-tony

A pure tungsten is essentially pure tungsten, not tungsten carbide. Tungsten wire and rod is generally drawn to size or pressed from powder, both of which give good dimentional tolerance and form a hard structure.

Come back when you've learned enough ferrous metallurgy to tell us _why_ you can turn iron into steel (whatever "steel" is) with just a tiny amount of carbon, but you won't do much to tungsten with that little.

-- Klein bottle for rent. Apply within.