Tungsten carbide wear plates: how and why are the hardest wear plates built?
If a chute or a crusher liner keeps coming back for replacement, a tungsten carbide wear plate looks like the obvious fix. Carbide is harder than anything else in common industrial use. Nothing abrasive slides through it easily.
But a plate made of carbide alone would not survive a season in a primary crusher, which is why almost nobody sells one. Here is what the market actually offers, how the options compare, and how we build ours.
What a “tungsten carbide wear plate” really is
Cemented carbide is tungsten carbide grains held together by a cobalt binder. It is an extremely hard substance and is used for example in cutting inserts in machine shops and the tips on rock drill bits.
However, when it comes to wear plates, hardness and fracture toughness compete against each other. The harder you make a single material, the less energy it absorbs before it cracks. A solid carbide plate big enough to line a chute would be expensive, heavy and vulnerable to a single large rock dropped from height.
So carbide reaches the chute another way: as tiles, as granules, or as an overlay, carried in a material that’s tougher against fractures. Every product sold as a tungsten carbide wear plate is a composite of some kind. The difference between them is what carries the carbide and how well it holds on. This blog post goes into more detail about composites and their use.
| Property | Hardened steel (500 HB type) | Tungsten carbide wear plate |
| Surface hardness | Moderate, approx. 500 HB | High, tungsten carbide up to 2000 HV |
| Abrasion resistance | Moderate | Very high |
| Impact resistance | Good | Good, from the iron matrix |
| Typical service life | Baseline | 10 to 15 times longer |
How are tungsten carbide wear plates built: using ROXDUR as an example
ROXDUR wear plates combine cemented carbide with an iron matrix. We place the cemented carbide in the mould before the iron is poured. The iron solidifies around it and forms a metallurgical bond, where the carbide stays put for the life of the plate. The iron matrix absorbs energy from impact.
The wear plates come in three forms: carbide tiles for lighter duty with fine material, carbide granules for heavy duty, and a combination of both where the wear pattern calls for it. Edge liners and welding segments cover the top edges and the point wear a full plate cannot reach.
The wear plates come in standard sizes and bolt into place. In most installations, we are replacing an existing liner, so the plate is engineered around dimensions the site already runs. Our customers’ own crews carry out most of the installations, but we can help if necessary.
Where a tungsten carbide plate is the wrong buy
The upfront cost of a tungsten carbide wear plate is several times more than a steel liner. There are places where that does not pay back:
- Where the plates suffer from either impact or sliding abrasion but not both at the same time
- Where your wear plates are already lasting a year or more. The downtime you would save is probably not worth the investment.
- Where the material is fine and not particularly abrasive, and rubber or steel handles it.
- Where the chute geometry changes with the ore body often enough that the plate will be cut out before it is worn out.
Steel is still the right answer in plenty of places. Where impact dominates and abrasion is mild, a steel liner is cheaper, easier to modify and perfectly adequate. The tungsten carbide wear plates earn their price where heavy impact and hard, abrasive material land in the same spot.
Why the need for tungsten carbide wear plates?
A liner buried in a crusher does not fail on schedule. When a weaker plate needs replacing every two or three months, you pay at least four times a year for the plate, the labour and the stopped production, and often for the emergency that forced the stop.
Common estimates state that reactive repairs cost three to five times more than the same work planned. In a large mine, an hour of unplanned downtime runs into hundreds of thousands of euros.
Take a chute from quarterly attention to annual, and a single avoided shutdown can cover the plates several times over.
The difference against other wear plates shows up most where heavy impact and hard, abrasive material meet in the same place. That points to a clear set of homes for a tungsten carbide wear plate:
- Crusher discharge zones and the path from primary to secondary crushing
- Transfer points and chutes that guide blasted rock from one conveyor to the next
- High capacity bulk handling ports and terminals loading ships
- Raw material transfer inside steel plants
- Large mining and construction sites moving big, sharp rock.
Every liner change means somebody in a confined space, under load, with dust and the chance of something coming loose overhead. Stretching wear life reduces the number of tricky maintenance visits required, thus improving safety.
If wear is setting the maintenance clock for your operation, tell us where the worst wear point is and what your current liners are managing. We will work back from there to the plate that fits. Get in touch.
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Frequently asked questions
How thick is a tungsten carbide wear plate?
There is no standard answer, because thickness is the variable we tune. We set the carbide layer against the maintenance interval you want to hit, so a plate can be built to last three, six, nine or twelve months on purpose.
How are the wear plates fixed in place?
The wear plates are bolted. However, ROXDUR can also be used in welding segments, which suit point wear, curved surfaces and areas a full plate cannot reach. Large areas can be covered by combining segments in a pattern with a minimum of welding.
Tungsten carbide, ceramic or chromium carbide overlay — which should I use?
Ceramic is excellent against sliding abrasion from fine material and poor under impact unless it is rubber-backed. Chromium carbide overlay sits between AR steel and cemented carbide on abrasion, and its surface is expected to develop check cracks. Cemented carbide composite is the one designed to take abrasion and impact in the same spot. Match the material to which of the two is actually killing your liner.
How long will it last?
Longer than steel, by a margin that depends on the duty. On one Peruvian copper transfer tower it took the interval from 60 days to 115. The useful question is not the multiple but the interval — tell us when your next planned shutdown is and we will build to it.
Can it be cut or modified on site?
No. Everything is engineered to the final dimensions before casting. This is why it makes sense to start from the liner you are replacing, if possible.