The challenges facing the steel industry — energy-intensive processes, availability of CO2-neutral energy and raw materials and complex supply chains — cannot be solved without sustainable and innovative solutions.
Depending on the region, there are different opportunities and risks for a tool steel producer to achieve decarbonization targets, among other things.
Tool steels are indispensable for the mass production of forgings and many other goods. The Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) of mass produced goods is becoming increasingly important for buyers in the automotive industry and in other sectors. So the PCF of tool steels, which need to be incorporated into a cradle-to-gate calculation of a product made with them, becomes increasingly important,...
Manufacturing Engineering Casting & Stamping within Volvo Cars is continuously evaluating, developing, and implementing new technology.
This presentation gives an overview of recent research and implementations in the area of die technology and sustainable materials used in casting and stamping at Volvo Cars.
Volvo Cars has also started the journey towards Smart Manufacturing & Digital...
When processing long products in particular, the process chain from steel production to the finished component is very long and generally optimized for large quantities. In contrast, the quantities for defense applications are extremely low compared to the automotive industry. Despite the high production costs, additive manufacturing of components can have advantages here because, for example,...
It is widely known that working within the micrometer range is essential in the construction of machine tools. One of the most time-consuming processes in this field is the precise alignment of individual components. The DWH adjustment coating, an epoxy resin system, offers a highly effective solution to this challenge by significantly reducing the time and effort required for fine-tuning and...
Additive manufacturing techniques such as Laser - Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) has great potential in reducing the CO2 footprint of many tooling solutions. By enabling complex internal cooling systems, and often a higher material hardness, increased tooling speeds and longer tool life is possible. Moreover, L-PBF enables in-house production, allowing for a more agile spare parts management. This...
This manuscript investigates the properties and performance of Osprey® HWTS 50, a lean hot work tool steel with 0.22 mass % carbon, in contrast to standard AISI-H13 and H11 grades (~0.4 mass %). The steel was manufactured using the laser powder bed fusion process (L-PBF) and subjected to sliding wear tests as well as gas nitriding. Three different conditions were evaluated: as-built (AB),...
The production of complexly shaped parts like molds with integrated cooling channels by additive manufacturing represents a promising approach by eliminating the need for specific tooling, reducing lead times, and minimizing the material footprint. Unfortunately, typical carbon-martensitic steels used to produce such components often suffer from crack formation during additive manufacturing...
In order to heat steel without CO2 emissions in the future, the burner technology of at least some of the furnaces used today will be converted from natural gas to hydrogen combustion. This poses a particular challenge for tool steel due to the more frequent heat treatments compared to engineering steel. The effect of the changed process gas on the furnace lining, temperature uniformity (TUS)...
The additive manufacturing of complex shapes and medium-sized parts by Directed Energy Deposition-Arc (DED Arc/M) presents a promising approach by eliminating the need for specific tooling and minimizing resource use. However, DED-Arc/M results in microstructures differing distinctly from those observed in conventionally processed, cast materials. This is attributed to the process immanent...
A sustainable steel production involves using renewable energy sources, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and minimizing and recycling waste during the production process. However, the most significant effect in case of tool steels is increasing the scrap rate during melting, and more specifically using correctly sorted scrap. To achieve this, a circular economy involving steel producer,...
Fine blanking is a manufacturing process combining forming and blanking operations to produce metal parts from coils with high dimensional accuracy, smooth edges, and minimal post-processing requirements. However, challenges such as unexpected tool wear and fluctuations in material properties can lead to unplanned machine downtimes, increased scrap production, costly finishing treatments, and...
The production cost of aluminum die casting is largely influenced by the raw materials used in the die steel. Due to the high temperature and pressure conditions, die-casting moulds require frequent replacement. In this study, a novel hot work die steel, SDH68, was developed, offering lower raw material costs compared to conventional H11 steel. Thermal fatigue is the most prevalent failure...
The requirements for tool steels have increased in recent years. For example, the trend in the automotive industry towards stronger sheet metal for the automotive industry is leading to higher tool loads in cold work applications, such as fine blanking, punching, and cold forming. A comprehensive understanding of the properties of these steels is therefore essential for the development of such...
Prehardened already heat-treated steels are commonly used in tooling applications. Most plastic moulds are for example produced from such steel products. The benefits are several compared to machining soft steel and do external heat treatment. Among those are shorter lead times, lower costs, and a better control of the product quality. Commercial prehardened steels have a limited maximum...
A novel maraging hot work steel designed for integrated die casting, SDH88, is developed to achieve a balance between ultimate tensile strength (UTS), yield strength (YS), and elongation by combining nanometer-scale precipitates of B2-NiAl, Cu-rich, and M2C carbide. Compared with H11 hot work steel, SDH88 steel exhibits an excellent hardenability and better tempering softening resistance (TSR,...
For most metalworking tools, cutting-edge loads fluctuate at high levels during the industrial application, leading to material fatigue and tool failure. Usually, fatigue crack propagation is observed on cracks emanating from large, through-specimen-width notches that average a large number of microstructural features along the crack front, which does not represent reality. To address the...
Designing a powder metallurgical high speed steel (PM-HSS) means defining the best compromise between toughness, hardness at room or high temperature, wear resistance, grinding ability etc. The best compromise depends on final application. In this context, Erasteel developed a solution intended for tools that suffer mainly from mixed adhesive/abrasive wear and/or chipping/cracking together...
This paper (short communication) reports the impact of retained austenite on the corrosion behavior of plastic molding grades such as Vanax Super Clean, Tyrax ESR, Stavax ESR and Mirrax ESR. For each grade, austenitization at two different temperatures were carried out and samples in as-quenched condition was compared with as-quenched condition with deep cooling. Corrosion behavior was...
Increasing physical demands on tool steels are directly reflected in a higher molybdenum alloy content. Depending on their application, tool steels are classified into:
• Cold-work tool steels (Mo ≤1.8%)
• Hot-work tool steels (Mo ≤3.0%)
• High-speed tool steels (Mo ≥5%)
Molybdenum additions to tool steels increase both hardness and wear resistance while providing acceptable toughness. By...
High-Pressure Die-Casting is the most important process in light-metal casting for mass production especially in the automotive sector. The process is well established for a wide range of components all over the vehicle from engine and drive train components over gear boxes and electronic housing to body in white components and subframes. Due to recent trends and legal restrictions the...
Highly stressed aluminum components, such as wheels and chassis parts, are often manufactured using low-pressure die casting. This is partly because the process results in a particularly low-oxide and low-porosity microstructure and therefore high strength and elongation at break. However, the increasing complexity of components and the desire to save weight also leads to challenges in...
In-situ alloying via laser-based powder bed fusion of metals (PBF-LB/M) has gained attention
as an alternative to pre-alloyed powders. In steel making, this method is particularly
advantageous for the additivation of carbides like titanium carbide (TiC) which should not
fully melt during the PBF-LB/M process. On the one hand side, this ensures that the carbon
content in the steel...
The service life of press hardening tools is a decisive factor for the efficiency of production processes, particularly in the hot forming of galvanized and AlSi-coated sheet metal. With the EvolutionClad 58 coating solution, which is applied by laser deposition welding, the service life is significantly increased compared to through-hardened variants. This approach to tool manufacturing is...
Aluminum die casting plays a major role in automotive construction and is becoming even more important due to new production technologies such as giga-casting. In the interests of climate-friendly production, however, the CO2 footprint across the entire process chain must also be increasingly considered and approaches must be sought to minimize CO2 emissions. Toolmaking must not be left out of...
Conformal cooling channels (CCC) are essential in plastic injection moulds to enhance cooling and reduce the cycle time. Recent advances in metal additive manufacturing (AM) make such fabrication possible. However, the utilisation of AM in modern mould-making is still low due to higher manufacturing costs. This article reports designing and manufacturing an 8-cavity plastic injection mould...
Copper alloy components, such as molds and tooling, allow efficient thermal dissipation but are prone to surface damage due to their relatively low strength. Applying hard coatings such as tool steels deposited by laser cladding, can significantly enhance surface strength, thereby extending the lifespan of these components.
In this study, H13 coatings with varying thicknesses were deposited...
The integrated die-casting technology significantly enhances the production efficiency of new energy vehicles while reducing costs, leading a revolution in the new energy vehicle industry. This technology places higher demands on the die steel materials used, and the availability of large-sized die steel is one of the bottlenecks encountered in the industrialization and application of this...
Additive manufacturing (AM) provides a unique opportunity to have freedom in design. Often it is necessary to perform post treatment processes on the printed component to adjust the mechanical properties. This is particularly true for martensitic H13 tool steels manufactured with laser-powder bed fusion (L-PBF) where repeated thermal cycles as the result of the addition of the new top layer,...
Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) and Titanium Nitride (TiN) coatings are widely employed to increase the useful lifespan and performances of Hard Metal (HM) and High-Speed Steel (HSS) cutting tools, especially for harsh and severe service conditions. Then, at the end of the service life, tools will present damages and defects that lead to their decommissioning. For this reason, an effective procedure...
Wear-resistant tool steels with high carbide contents are essential to optimize performance and lifetimes of cutting, stamping and extrusion tools used for industrial massive cold forming applications. Tool service life is primarily constrained by wear resistance and fatigue strength. However, the complex connection between the steel manufacturing process and the fatigue strength has not yet...
This study investigates the ion nitriding process of a novel aluminium-extruded mould steel (SDAH13 steel) with four different aluminium contents (0.01 wt.%, 0.21 wt.%, 0.76 wt.%, and 1.33 wt.%) through orthogonal and univariate experiments. Optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were employed to characterise the microstructure and phase composition...
Fatigue resistance is an essential property to consider in the design of a plastic injection mould. During plastic injection, certain parts of the mould can reach temperatures between 100 and 300°C and be subjected to high pressures of around 300 – 600 bar during holding. Therefore, moulds must withstand a large number of injection cycles, from thousands to millions, depending on the required...
This study focuses on a high-nitrogen martensitic tool steel, known for its excellent corrosion resistance, very high wear resistance, high compressive strength, and good hardening properties. Due to the presence of high nitrogen and other alloying elements, producing this alloy using conventional processes is challenging. As a result, it is manufactured using powder metallurgy (PM) and hot...
Hot forming, especially hot forging is a very demanding forming application requiring tool material with high strength and toughness and above all good wear resistance at elevated temperatures. Prevailing wear mechanisms in hot forming are abrasive wear and galling, with abrasive wear leading to dimensions mismatch and galling to unstable friction and poor surface quality of the forgings. In...
Cryogenic treatment is widely utilized for tool as well as die steels in order to enhance their performance. AISI H13 die steel is widely used in forging industries wherein fatigue loading conditions are frequently encountered leading to failure of the forging dies. This work involves heating AISI H13 specimens to 1020⁰C for 20 minutes thereafter quenching in oil followed by double tempering...
The tribological behaviour of materials machined by electro discharge machining (EDM) is strongly influenced by microstructural changes in the surface layers. This technique is commonly used to machine cemented carbides, which are known for their high hardness and excellent wear resistance.
In this research, the impact of different surface finishes on the tribological properties of...
The martensitic tool steel family is tailored for different specific working environments, ranging from cold work to hot work applications demonstrating high hardness, toughness and wear resistance. Nowadays, their microstructure is continuously upgraded by either composition developments or processing techniques. Both ways introduce new types of defects making the investigation of their...
C75 tool steel is a very widely used material in several technological fields due to its low cost and high availability combined with good mechanical properties. However, the material is prone to environmental degradation, sometimes combined with tribological degradation, in which case a coating is necessary to avoid these problems, with the main aim of increasing the environmental and...
The wire drawing process enhances the material properties and dimensional accuracy of hot-rolled wire by pulling it through dies typically made of cemented tungsten carbide or diamond. Despite ethical and health concerns associated with cobalt, a key component of cemented carbide, it remains the most common choice due to its cost-effectiveness and durability. Recently, Nano Dies with...
Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers numerous possibilities for toolmaking, such as the integration of internal cooling structures, easy fabrication of complex tool geometries or hybrid manufacturing. Another important aspect is the minimization of necessary post-processing steps through near-net-shape manufacturing, which enables considerable cost and effort savings, especially for...
Designing cold-work tools against fatigue fracture under uniaxial and multiaxial cyclic loading is of great economic relevance for industry to increase the productivity in metal cold forming processes. To implement more resource-efficient and low-emission production chains, minimizing retooling times, increasing tool service lifes and produced quantities per tool is of particular interest to...
Gears designed for power transmission in aircraft require increased surface hardness while maintaining the integrity of their core properties. This is typically achieved through conventional thermochemical treatments like case hardening or nitriding. However, these methods can be time-consuming and generate significant CO2 emissions, prompting the search for new processes to meet modern...
The speech will also focus on the production of Metal Powders and Powder Metallurgical Steels and especially its associated production technologies like HIP, MIM and AM. As they are and will become key future core technologies for several demanding products and thus for the usage in different associated industries. The presentation will also highlight the actual supply and demand situation of...
Since 2019, the Brazilian government has been implementing programs to develop the automotive supply chain. One of these programs, entitled "More Competitive Brazilian Toolmakers", seeks to overcome the challenges faced by toolmakers with low productivity and technological lag. The main objective is to train the tooling chain for automotive products, seeking to achieve global competitiveness....
Die casting tools are subject to extreme thermal and mechanical stresses which manifest themselves in a variety of wear mechanisms and often premature failure. The necessary repair and maintenance of the tools result in enormous costs for the foundries and place a heavy burden on the economic efficiency of the die casting process. This is exacerbated by the fact that the manual repair welding...
The production of high-speed steels using powder metallurgy (PM) frequently results in materials with superior characteristics in terms of wear resistance and mechanical properties. This is particularly the case when compared to conventionally produced steels. Cleanness is thereby a critical factor that influences the property profile of these steels. For this reason, non-metallic inclusions...
As a possibility to understand the mechanisms of austenite stabilization due to stress relief heat treatment in a cold work tool steel, this work has used the concept of matrix steel and evaluated the composition of the matrix of AISI D2 tool steel (MSD2). This work presents the characterization of two conditions: quenched and quenched followed by stress relief heat treatment. The specimens...
Additive manufacturing (AM) using Directed Energy Deposition (DED) has emerged as a potential technique for repairing components of high-performance materials like K340 tool steel. K340 is a high-carbon, chromium-molybdenum-vanadium alloyed cold-work tool steel known for its exceptional mechanical properties, making it ideal for demanding applications such as forming and stamping tools and...
This study employed the electrical resistivity method to uncover the phenomenon of carbide precipitation along grain boundaries in 4Cr5Mo2V die casting die steel under specific quenching and cooling rates, and delved into the impact of this phenomenon on the high-temperature service performance. By comprehensively utilizing characterization techniques such as Scanning Electron Microscopy...
There is a growing interest in adapting various metal additive manufacturing (AM) technologies to produce multi-material components. This is particularly appealing in the tooling industry, where combining properties like hardness, corrosion resistance, and toughness from different alloys within a single tool can greatly enhance performance. Significant efforts have been made to adapt powder...
According to Polaris Market Research “Tool Steel Market Size, Share Global Analysis Report, 2023-2032” the plastic mold segment had the highest market penetration in 2022. It forecasts that this trend will persist until the end of the forecast period in 2032. Even slightly worn-out parts in polymer processing can lead to variations in the produced polymer parts, resulting in them being out of...
Based on the concept of combining the advantages of standard carbon martensite with those of maraging, carbide strengthened Ni-Co-Cr-Mo steels were introduced over 40 years ago. These steels contained up to 0.4 wt.% C in combination with Ni (up to 10 wt.%), Co (up 8 wt.%) and additions of Mo, Cr and V. This development stemmed from the need to combine high yield strength, and wear resistance...
Cooling systems utilizing water are usually used for temperature control in injection moulding processes. To achieve short production cycle times and high surface quality of injection-moulded parts, cooling channels are designed to run close to the mould's cavity surface. While optimal cooling performance is achieved by conformal cooling channels using additive manufacturing techniques,...
Hot work tool steels are generally used among others for applications in aluminum pressure die-casting. Laser based additive manufacturing (AM) technologies allow producing dies and inserts with complex geometries and conformal cooling, resulting in higher product quality and increased process profitability. Nowadays only few steel powder alloys for AM of dies and tools are adopted widescale....
For cold work tool steel applications, additive manufacturing is an attractive technology that provides opportunities to manufacture tools with complex geometries with minimal machining to the net shape. In the present work, a chromium-molybdenum-vanadium LMD Vanadis 4 Extra© cold work tool steel was manufactured using the direct energy deposition (DED) method. Process parameters were varied...
In a continuous slab casting machine (CCM), rolls support the solid skin of the slab during casting. They are subjected to high corrosive and abrasive conditions and cyclic thermomechanical loading, caused by repeated contact with the hot metal (1100–1200 °C) and cooling in a water steam atmosphere. The combination of these effects leads to surface degradation. To limit the surface cracking...
