Volga Burmash runs a fully integrated carbide plant, and the production cycle is unbroken from raw material to finished, inspected component. It begins with tungsten-carbide powder produced to a controlled particle-size distribution and ends with a part that either goes straight into a drill bit or ships as a standalone product. Owning every stage is what lets VBM Guyana hold consistent grades and full batch traceability for tenders and procurement files.
The core process steps are powder production, wet-ball milling to formulate each grade precisely, spray drying for uniform granulation, isostatic and mechanical pressing, vacuum sintering in computer-controlled furnaces, and finish grinding on CNC surface and cylindrical grinders. Sintering temperature, dwell and cooling are logged for every batch, which is what gives the finished carbide its repeatable density and grain structure.
Several proprietary grades come out of that cycle, each matched to a job. High-cobalt grades at 12–16% Co carry maximum toughness for impact-heavy mining and the abrasive greenstone of Guyana's gold belt, where chipping resistance matters more than peak hardness. Low-cobalt grades at 6–8% Co deliver the extreme hardness needed for nozzles, dies and abrasion-resistant wear pads, while medium grades balance the two for general-purpose roller-cone inserts.
Every batch is tested before it leaves the plant: density, hardness in HRA, magnetic coercivity, cobalt content and full dimensional inspection. Coercivity in particular flags grain growth or porosity that a hardness reading alone would miss, so the grade you specify is the grade you receive — run after run, in the basin's most abrasive ground.