Reparation of damaged forging dies by hard facing (HF) technology

Abstract

The forging dies are in exploitation exposed to elevated temperatures and variable impact loads, both compressive and shear. Steels for manufacturing of these tools must endure those loads while maintaining mechanical properties and being resistant to wear and thermal fatigue. For those reasons, the alloyed steels are used for making the forging dies, though they have less weldability, because alloying increases proneness to hardening. Any reparatory hard facing (HF) of the damaged dies would require the specially adjusted technology to the particular piece. In this paper reparatory hard facing of dies used for forging pieces in the automobile industry is considered. Prior to reparatory hard facing of the real tools, numerous experimental hard facings on models were performed. All the model hard facings were done on the same steels which were used for production of the real forging dies. To define the optimal hard facing technology one needs to derive the optimal combination of the adequate heat treatment(s), to select the proper filler metals and the welding procedure. The established optimal HF technology was applied to real forging dies whose service life was further monitored in conditions of exploitation.