Carbide scrap price: what sets it, and how to get yours

Scrap carbide is cemented carbide: hard grains of tungsten carbide (WC) locked in a metal binder. Micrographs from the International Tungsten Industry Association (ITIA) show hard WC particles of 1 to 2 microns embedded in a tough cobalt alloy matrix. The tungsten carbide gives the hardness and the cobalt gives the toughness.

ITIA calls 90% tungsten carbide with 10% cobalt a typical straight grade. The National Toxicology Program puts most commercial grades between 3% and 16% cobalt, with the balance mostly tungsten carbide and sometimes some titanium or tantalum carbide. A smaller group of grades bind the grains with nickel or iron instead of cobalt.

Tungsten carbide itself is nearly all tungsten. ITIA gives stoichiometric WC a carbon content of 6.13% by weight, which leaves roughly 93.9% for the tungsten. That tungsten, and behind it the cobalt, is what anyone buying carbide scrap is paying for. Put your own weight and binder share into the calculator below to see the split.

Sources: ITIA, Cemented carbides (newsletter, June 2010); ITIA, Applications and markets; ITIA, Properties of tungsten and its intermediates; National Toxicology Program, hard metals background document (2009); OSTI, cemented tungsten carbide binders (2023).

USGS splits tungsten scrap into two kinds. Hard scrap is solid pieces, cemented carbide parts among them. Soft scrap is fine particles: cutting or grinding sludges, loose powders, swarf and turnings.

That split decides where the carbide goes. In the zinc process, ITIA explains, sorted and cleaned hard scrap turns into a friable powder with the same composition it went in with. Most soft scrap, and most unsorted hard scrap, is converted chemically into ammonium paratungstate (APT), the high-purity intermediate behind most tungsten products. ITIA's 2019 estimate for Europe and the US is about a third of hard scrap through zinc and about two thirds through chemistry.

Three habits follow for anyone selling: keep solids and sludge in separate containers, keep inserts apart from brazed tools, and never grind or crush parts to make them fit a box. The National Toxicology Program lists cobalt-tungsten carbide powders and hard metals as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen, and grinding is what makes the dust. The sorting guide covers bins and labels, and grindings and sludge covers wet material.

Sources: USGS Open-File Report 2005-1028 (tungsten recycling, 2000 data); ITIA, Recycling of tungsten, part 2 (August 2019); National Toxicology Program, Report on Carcinogens profile.

Per-pound figures found online can sit far apart. Most are true for something; few describe your box.

• Different material. A figure for clean, sorted inserts says nothing about brazed saw tips, mining bits on steel bodies or a tub of wet sludge.
• Different unit. Tungsten trades as APT and concentrate by the metric ton unit, which USGS ties to tungsten content, not by the pound of scrap. Getting from one to the other takes the grade, the binder and the yield of the lot.
• Different date. By the USGS 2026 figures above, APT roughly doubled during 2025, so a number posted a year earlier can be badly out of date.
• Different weight. In ITIA's road-milling example the carbide was under a tenth of the tool, so a per-pound figure for road teeth describes their tips, not the steel.
• New versus used. A per-pound price for new tungsten carbide rod, blanks or powder is the price of a product toolmakers buy, not of scrap.

So this page carries no price table: a number that ignores the lot is a guess, and we would rather quote the pieces you have.

Sources: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, Tungsten; ITIA, Recycling of tungsten, part 1 (May 2018).