Tungsten to Copper Silver Brazing

Tungsten carbide with any sort of oil, grease, oxide or free carbon on it will not braze. You can clean carbide by grinding the surface with a sander or a bench grinder. The simplest is just to specify that the carbide be wet table when you order it.

Brazing Tungsten Carbide

I routinely get calls from people who are having trouble brazing carbide and don’t know why. Brazing tungsten carbide is a very easy and reliable process if a few simple steps are taken but the steps are not necessarily obvious or widely known. There are many additional articles on How to Braze in our Brazing index.

The carbide must be wettable, it must want to chemically and physically bond with the brazing alloy. Clean tungsten carbide brazes well. Tungsten carbide with any sort of oil, grease, oxide or free carbon on it will not braze. You can clean carbide by grinding the surface with a sander or a bench grinder.

When brazing carbide it is often much more effective to flux the sides and bottom of the notch then put pieces of fluxed alloy wire under the carbide. All you do then is to heat until the carbide settles in place.

The standard should be that the carbide ruptures or the steel rips before the joint fails.