How to sort carbide scrap, pile by pile

Sort by form first. These seven piles match the choices on our quote form, so a sorted bench fills the form in for you.

1. Inserts. Indexable tips taken off their holders, in any shape. See carbide inserts.
2. Solid round tools. End mills, drills, reamers, burs and router bits that are carbide from tip to shank. See end mills and drills.
3. Rods and blanks. Ground rod, as-sintered blanks, offcuts and broken lengths that never became tools. See rods and blanks.
4. Brazed tools and saw tips. Tipped saw blades, brazed lathe tools, masonry bits and loose tips. They need a pile of their own because ITIA says the solder on brazed parts has to come off before processing. See brazed carbide and saw tips.
5. Wear parts and dies. Drawing dies, punches, seal rings, nozzles, bushings and rolls. See dies and wear parts.
6. Mining and road bits. Button bits, loose buttons and road-milling teeth. Keep them away from solid carbide, since most of a road bit's weight is steel: in one ITIA example, a 280 g road-milling chisel carried a 24 g carbide tip. See mining and road bits.
7. Soft scrap. Grinding sludge, swarf, powder and sweepings, sealed and kept off the solids. See grindings, sludge and powder.

Inside each pile, worn, chipped and snapped pieces go in with the rest. A broken insert is still the same carbide.

Sources: ITIA: Recycling of tungsten, part 1.

Pick out toolholders, clamps, insert screws, steel shims, bolts and stray chips before anything gets bagged.

High-speed steel (HSS) is harder to catch, because it comes in the same shapes. ITIA says about 95% of HSS goes into machining tools such as drills, taps, milling cutters and saw blades. It holds 1.5 to 20% tungsten, against typically above 80% in carbide inserts, and ITIA notes that tungsten can go back into a steel melt as selected scrap, a different road from carbide's. Give it a bag of its own; we buy high-speed steel scrap as well.

Heft is the quickest check: the NTP profile puts tungsten carbide at 15.6 g/cm³ and the NIST table puts iron at 7.874, so carbide weighs close to double for its size. A carbide drill feels far heavier in the hand than a steel one the same size. Many HSS drills and taps are also stamped HSS on the shank. A magnet makes a poor sorter here, as our guide Is carbide magnetic? explains; when you cannot tell, bag it as not sure.

Carbide that is brazed on stays on its steel. Do not grind, torch or saw tips loose: OSHA reports that of 12 workers who developed interstitial lung disease from making or grinding tungsten carbide tools, eight died.

Sources: ITIA: Tungsten in steel; ITIA: Recycling of tungsten, part 1; NTP Report on Carcinogens: cobalt-tungsten carbide; NIST X-ray mass attenuation tables (densities); OSHA: Cobalt dust.

Carbide is dense, so a bag or box reaches its weight limit long before it is full.

• Heavy zip bags or doubled poly bags for inserts and small tools, one kind per bag, so each bag can be weighed alone.
• Lidded pails for collecting at the machine. A coffee can beside each spindle catches inserts before they reach the chip bin.
• Gasket-lid pails or drums for sludge and powder, one per machine.
• Strong boxes for shipping. USPS says plain corrugated boxes are best up to 10 pounds; dense items such as tools and machine parts weighing 20 to 45 pounds need 200-pound test board or better, and no mailpiece may top 70 pounds. Use 2-inch packing tape, never string or masking tape.

Brace the bags so nothing slides; ship your scrap covers boxes and pallets.

Sources: USPS: Preparing packages; USPS Domestic Mail Manual 601.

The quote form takes up to six photos. Spend them like this:

1. One wide shot of the whole lot in its bags, buckets or boxes.
2. Close-ups of each pile, a handful of pieces spread on a plain surface in daylight so coatings and shapes show.
3. Anything you are not sure of, next to a known carbide piece.
4. Brazed tools or bits, close enough to see where the carbide meets the steel.
5. Sludge with the lid off, or your label list.

Tick every form that applies, give a weight or a container count, and put coatings and grades in the notes. Or email help@carbidebuyerusa.com or call (877) 838-9920.

Sorted or mixed, sellers anywhere in the US can ship their carbide to us, and we pay the shipping. In California, Arizona and Nevada we can pick it up instead, in any city. We pay cash where state law allows; the scrap metal rules guide explains the payment rules in each state.