**2. WC-Co-based cutting tool materials**

WC-CO has become one of the most common materials for many applications requiring high temperature and high wear resistance like cutting tool in manufacturing industry [7]. It also includes machining of cast iron, various non-ferrous metals, etc. WC-based composite tool materials normally possess higher hardness, strength, thermal conductivity, chipping resistance, and plastic deformation resistance and have been universally used in high-speed cutting. These attractive properties gave it great potential to be used as high-speed cutting tool materials. But the application of WC as cutting tools is severely limited due to low fracture toughness. Cemented

*Graphene Composite Cutting Tool for Conventional Machining DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105136*

**Figure 1.**

*Various techniques to improve the performance of cutting tool.*

**Figure 2.** *Tool life depends upon various factors.*

carbides belong to the most common and the longest-used tool materials produced by powder metallurgy methods [8, 9]. Sintered carbides are characterized by their high strength and abrasion resistance and include one or more high-melting metal carbides constituting the basic component together with the metallic binding phase. The basic component of cemented carbides is WC, which, depending on the manufacturer and group of material applications, can constitute from 50% to 90% by weight of the sintered content. Cemented carbides have replaced high-speed steels in metalworking and mining. Cemented carbides are metal-ceramic composites that consist of hard tungsten, titanium, and tantalum carbide grains located in a ductile matrix (binder) based on cobalt or nickel and have a unique combination of high hardness, wear-resistance, and toughness [10]. By now, a large number of cemented carbide grades have been developed, with diverse combinations of components both in the carbide phase and in the binder. Nowadays market distribution of cutting tool material has shown that cemented carbide has a dispersion of 53%, high-speed steel has a dispersion of 20% [11]. As we know, tool life of cutting tool depends upon various factors as shown in **Figure 2**.
