Tungsten wire is generally drawn from various drawing dies. The main use is to make filament and high-speed cutting alloy steel, and also used in optical instruments, chemical instruments, etc.
Pure tungsten wire can be divided into paste extruded tungsten wire, colloidized tungsten wire, ductile tungsten wire, etc. according to its properties, only ductile tungsten wire has better performance and is used more, and other tungsten filaments are used less due to brittleness.
Tungsten filament is used as a small amount of heating material for high-temperature furnaces, thermons for electron tubes and stiffeners for composite materials, most of which are used to make filaments for various incandescent lamps and halogen tungsten lamps and electrodes for gas discharge lamps. For tungsten wire or tungsten rod used as the cathode of gas discharge lamp, in order to reduce its electronic escape work, 0.5~3% thorium must be added, which is called tungsten thorium wire. Because thorium is a radioactive element that pollutes the environment, cerium is used instead of thorium to make tungsten cerium wire or tungsten cerium rod. However, the evaporation rate of cerium is high, so tungsten cerium wire or tungsten cerium rod can only be used for low-power gas discharge lamps.