Custom tungsten copper electrode wheels are not a catalogue purchase, but they should not be a complicated one either. The process from your drawing to a wheel running on your seamer is short and predictable — provided you send the right information up front. This guide walks through each stage from a buyer’s perspective, with the actual timelines and terms involved.
Stage 1: Prepare the drawing — or the worn wheel
The single most useful document is a dimensioned drawing: OD, thickness, bore (with tolerance and keyway if driven), edge profile, and alloy grade if your weld schedule was validated on one. PDF, DWG or STEP all work.
No drawing? That is common with long-lived seamers whose original supplier is gone. A worn wheel works nearly as well — send it or send clear photos with caliper measurements of bore, OD and thickness. The profile can be matched from the wear face. Three dimensions decide whether a replacement drops straight onto your shaft:
- Bore — H7 is the typical standard cut, keyed bores to drawing.
- OD — typically held at 0/+0.5 mm against your arm geometry.
- Runout — typically 0.02 mm, the value that stops the wheel hunting on the seam.
Thickness is typically held to ±0.1 mm, and the wheel should be balanced before packing — an unbalanced wheel shows up as seam chatter at line speed long before it shows up as wear.
Stage 2: The RFQ — what to include and what comes back
Send the drawing plus four things: alloy grade (W/Cu 75/25 or 70/30 — or ask for a recommendation), quantity, your destination port, and any inspection paperwork your quality system requires. A complete RFQ gets a firm answer within 24 hours: unit price, tooling cost if any, and a lead time.
Two things worth knowing about how serious suppliers quote:
- Quotes are time-boxed. A 7-day validity is normal and honest — tungsten raw material moves, and a quote that pretends otherwise comes back to you as a surprise later.
- First articles carry no volume penalty. There is no MOQ for standard sizes, and one-piece trial quantities are quoted without inflated pricing. If the part works, repeat batches run off the same program.
For custom geometries, expect the quote to state the tooling separately from the unit price, so you can see exactly what you are committing to.
Stage 3: Production — what happens to your part
Infiltration-sintered W/Cu is produced by pressing a tungsten skeleton and infiltrating it with copper, then finish-machining to drawing: turning, boring, keyway cutting, profile forming, and balancing. Every batch is checked for composition, density and hardness, and dimensional inspection records — bore, OD, runout, thickness — can accompany the shipment against the drawing revision you hold. If your quality system requires an external certificate rather than a factory report, third-party stamped test reports per ASTM B702 are typically available on request.
Repeat orders are the quiet advantage here: the same program and the same drawing revision run every time, so seating behavior and profile do not drift between batches. For lines that consume wheels weekly, standing schedules — agreed dimensions, agreed profile, shipments on your consumption rhythm — remove the reorder decision entirely.
Stage 4: Lead times and shipping terms
Realistic planning numbers:
- Standard shapes: 10–14 days.
- Custom geometries (tooling + machining): 20–25 days.
- Samples: typically 10 days or less — enough to run a genuine trial before committing to a campaign.
Production is based at the Heyuan, Guangdong factory, and shipments move FOB Shenzhen or Nansha. Confirm with your freight forwarder which port your consolidation prefers. Sub-80%-tungsten alloys ship as ordinary industrial goods with standard documentation — commercial invoice, packing list, certificate of origin where needed — and clear customs on the usual HS classification with no export-license step.
The mistakes that cost weeks
Nearly every delayed order traces to one of these: a bore specified without its keyway; an alloy changed after the quote (“same price, right?” — usually yes, but it restarts the paperwork); or a receiving inspection written around values the supplier never agreed to. Put bore tolerance, runout and the inspection records you need in the RFQ, and the shipment passes your goods-in the first time.
Start your RFQ
Send your drawing — or photos of the worn wheel — to sales@arctung.com and you will have a firm price and lead time within 24 hours. Samples ship in 10 days or less if you want to validate on the line first.