The present paper describes a new method concerning the production of hybrid bevel gears using the Tailored Forming technology. The main idea of the Tailored Forming involves the creation of bi-metal workpieces using a joining process prior to the forming step and targeted treatment of the resulting joint by thermo-mechanical processing during the subsequent forming at elevated temperatures. This improves the mechanical and geometrical properties of the joining zone. The aim is to produce components with a hybrid material system, where the high-quality and expensive material is located in highly stressed areas only. When used appropriately, it is possible to reduce costs by using fewer high-performance materials than in a component made of a single material. There is also the opportunity to significantly increase performance by combining special load-tailored high-performance materials. The core of the technology consists in the material-locking coating of semi-finished parts by means of plasma-transferred-arc welding (PTA) and subsequent forming. In the presented investigations, steel cylinders made of C22.8 are first coated with the higher-quality heat-treatable steel 41Cr4 using PTA-welding and then hot-formed in a forging process. It could be shown that the applied coating can be formed successfully by hot forging processes without suffering any damage or defects and that the previous weld structure is completely transformed into a homogeneous forming-typical structure. Thus, negative thermal influences of the welding process on the microstructure are completely neutralized.

The current study introduces a method for manufacturing steel–aluminum bearing bushings by compound forging. To study the process, cylindrical bimetal workpieces consisting of steel AISI 4820 (1.7147, 20MnCr5) in the internal diameter and aluminum 6082 (3.2315, AlSi1MgMn) in the external diameter were used. The forming of compounds consisting of dissimilar materials is challenging due to their different thermophysical and mechanical properties. The specific heating concept discussed in this article was developed in order to achieve sufficient formability for both materials simultaneously. By means of tailored heating, the bimetal workpieces were successfully formed to a bearing bushing geometry using two different strategies with different heating durations. A metallurgical bond without any forging defects, e.g., gaps and cracks, was observed in areas of high deformation. The steel–aluminum interface was subsequently examined by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). It was found that the examined forming process, which utilized steel–aluminum workpieces having no metallurgical bond prior to forming, led to the formation of insular intermetallic phases along the joining zone with a maximum thickness of approximately 5–7 µm. The results of the EDS analysis indicated a prevailing Fe_xAl_y phase in the resulting intermetallic layer.

The production of multi-metal bulk components requires suitable manufacturing technologies. On the example of hybrid bevel gears featuring two different steels at the outer surface and on the inside, the applicability of the novel manufacturing technology of Tailored Forming was investigated. In a first processing step, a semi-finished compound was manufactured by cladding a substrate using a plasma transferred arc welding or a laser hotwire process. The resulting semi-finished workpieces with a metallurgical bond were subsequently near-net shape forged to bevel gears. Using the residual heat after the forging process, a process-integrated heat treatment was carried out directly after forming. For the investigations, the material combinations of 41Cr4 with C22.8 (AISI 5140/AISI 1022M) and X45CrSi9-3 with C22.8 (AISI HNV3/AISI 1022M) were applied. To reveal the influence of the single processing steps on the resulting interface, metallographic examinations, hardness measurements and micro tensile tests were carried out after cladding, forging and process-integrated heat treatment. Due to forging and heat-treatment, recrystallization and grain refinement at the interface and an increase in both, hardness and tensile strength, were observed.

Thermomechanical treatment (TMT) describes the effect of thermal and mechanical conditions on the microstructure of materials during processing and offers possible integration in the forging process. TMT materials exhibit a fine-grained microstructure, leading to excellent mechanical properties. In this study, a two-step TMT upsetting process with intermediate cooling is used to demonstrate possibilities for a process-integrated treatment and corresponding properties. A water–air-based cooling system was designed to adjust different phase configurations by varying the target temperature and cooling rate. Four different thermal processing routes and four combinations of applied plastic strains are investigated in standardized mechanical tests and metallographic analyses. The applied TMT results in a finely structured bainitic microstructure of the investigated tempering steel AISI 4140 (42CrMo4) with different characteristics depending on the forming conditions. It can be shown that the demands of the standard (DIN EN ISO 683) in a quenched and tempered state can be fulfilled by means of appropriate forming conditions. The yield strength can be enhanced up to 1174 MPa while elongation at break is about 12.6% and absorbed impact energy reaches 58.5 J without additional heat treatment when the material is formed after rapid cooling.