Tungsten Wire from the Experts
As a product with no known substitute for many of its diverse applications, tungsten wire is far more than just the material used in light bulb filaments for over a century. And when you want to buy tungsten wire, Metal Cutting is more than a product source — we’re a resource providing knowledge and expertise. In addition to being an expert in specialty tungsten products (including tungsten wire) since our establishment in 1967, we have been the exclusive North American distributor of Nippon Tungsten’s tungsten and molybdenum products for more than 30 years.
Characteristics and Uses of Tungsten Wire
If you want to buy tungsten wire for an application requiring very high tensile strength, unique stiffness and no spring back, a high melting point, low coefficient of thermal expansion, and low vapor pressure at elevated temperatures, you’re in luck: In the form of wire, our products maintain many of tungsten’s most valuable properties.
With good electrical and thermal conductivity, our tungsten wire products are widely used in the glass-to-metal seals in lighting and electronics products, and are critically important to the manufacture and testing of integrated circuits. Customers also buy tungsten wire for use in medical devices applications where electric current is utilized and where precision is critical. These include devices ranging from electrocautery probes to delicate tools used in stimulation and neural probing, where incredibly small diameter tungsten wire maintains its straightness and shape. High tensile values make our tungsten wire a cost-effective alternative to precious metals for distal delivery and instrumentation in minimally invasive medical procedures. Its ultra-high density comparable to precious metals also makes tungsten wire highly radiopaque and, thus, advantageous for use in fluoroscopic applications while offering considerable savings compared with precious metals.
Because our tungsten wire holds its shape at high temperatures, it is widely used in industrial furnaces, as well as in the boroscopes used to inspect the interiors of very high temperature environments, such as engines, turbines, pipes, and tanks that would be inaccessible by other means. With its extremely low vapor pressure at high temperatures, tungsten wire is used in the vacuum metalizing coils utilized in the surface coating of plastic toys, jewelry, cosmetic containers, and small decorative parts.
Doped vs. Undoped
One important consideration when you want to buy tungsten wire is whether you need the product doped or undoped (pure). With its higher recrystallization temperature, doped tungsten wire remains ductile at room temperature and at very high operating temperatures, and resists plastic deformation and breakage. The elongated, stacked structure of doped wire also provides good creep resistance and dimensional stability, and is slightly easier to machine than undoped wire. Our doped tungsten wire is available in diameters from as small as 0.00025″ (0.0065 mm) and up.
We also offer undoped tungsten wire for applications where purity is paramount; it is a greater than 99.99% pure product made from 99.999% pure powder. When you need to buy tungsten wire at the maximum possible purity, we are able to offer it manufactured in one location, from mineral to finished product.
One Source to Buy Tungsten Wire for Virtually Any Need
Among the most popular of our performance-engineered refractory powder metallurgy products, tungsten wire is available in all diameters (≥ 0.00025″/0.0065 mm); all doped and undoped compositions; round wire and flat ribbon; and all surface finishes from as-drawn to various grades of electro-polished and even plated with various thicknesses of 24 carat gold. Whatever your application or need may be, you can come to us for advice and the very best solution.
