Increasing the tool life of forging die inserts

In the metal-mechanic industry, wear and friction highly affect the useful life of forging dies, leading to economic losses and poor product quality. In this study, the tribological behavior of AISI H13 and Thermodur E40K Superclean hot-work tool steels with and without a nitriding thermochemical treatment were investigated for die inserts. Forging tests of brass pieces were performed under industrial conditions in order to validate the results obtained in the laboratory and to determine the optimal combination of conditions for the forging die inserts. The laboratory tests results showed that nitrided E40K had the best tribological performance. For the forging tests the application of the nitriding thermochemical treatment was detrimental to the performance of die inserts. Tool steel E40K presented the best results in the number of manufactured parts (+67%), fewer rejected parts (-67%) and equipment downtime during forging tests (-73%) compared to H13 tool steel. The novelty of this work consists on the application of a methodology based on the abstraction of a tribological system and the study of one of its most important response variables, wear, through laboratory testing. After this, technological decisions can be made in order to improve a complex manufacturing processes, such as forging of non-ferrous materials, which would be very costly if tested directly in the manufacturing process without prior laboratory study.