For some applications, especially where extremely high-speed cutting is important, other tool materials such as sintered carbide products are a more economical alternative to tool steel.

In many cases of stainless steel cutting operations with carbide tools, a tool life strongly depends on flank notch wear of depth of cut rather than average flank wear of main cutting edge.

When the shank size of a cutting tool is large enough, a more viable technique is to braze the carbide tip to a medium carbon steel shank.