Any manufacturing equipment designed from scratch requires a detailed follow-up of the performance for the first units placed in service during the production ramp-up, so that lessons learned are immediately implemented in next deliveries and running equipment is accordingly updated. Component failure analysis is one of the most valuable sources of improvement among these lessons. In this context, a failure-assessment based design revision of the conveying system of a newly developed press hardening furnace is presented. The proposed method starts with a forensic metallurgical analysis of the failed components, followed by an investigation of the working conditions to ensure they match the forensic observations. The results of this approach evidenced an initially unforeseen thermo-mechanical damage produced by a combination of thermal distortions, material ageing, and mechanical fatigue. Once the cause–effect relationship for the failure is backed up by evidence, an improved design is proposed. As a conclusion, a new standard design for the furnace entrance set of rollers in hot stamping lines was established for roller hearth furnaces. The solution can be extended to similar applications, ensuring the same issues will not arise thanks to the lessons learned.

The aim of this work is to investigate the durability of tool steels for hot stamping by comparing the wear resistance of three hot work tool steels. Friction and wear behaviours of different tool steels sliding against a 22MnB5 uncoated steel at elevated temperatures were investigated using a high‐temperature version of the Optimol SRV reciprocating friction and wear tester at temperatures of 40 and 200°C. Our results show that friction decreased with increasing temperature, whereas wear of the tool steel increased with temperature for the second and the third tested tool steels. The slightly better wear behaviour of steel specimen 1 comes from the hardness of the carbides in the martensitic microstructure, which are rich in vanadium.

Stamping dies perform two functions in the hot stamping process of body-in-white components. Firstly, they form the steel sheet into the desired shape and, secondly, they quench the steel at a cooling rate that leads to hardening by means of the austenite-γ to martensite transformation. This microstructural change implies a volume expansion that should lead to a force peak in the press, which has yet to be detected in industrial practice. In this study, a set of hot stamping laboratory tests were performed on instrumented Al–Si-coated 22MnB5 steel flat formats to analyze the effect of the stamping pressure on the detection of the expected peak. Plotting the sheet temperature and pressure curves against time allowed us to identify and understand the conditions in which the force peak can be detected. These conditions occurred most favorably when the stamping pressure is below 5 MPa. It is thus possible to determine the exact moment at which the complete hardening transformation occurs by monitoring the local pressing force of the tool in areas where the pressure exerted on the metal format is below 5 MPa. This information can be applied to optimize the time needed to open the dies in terms of the complete martensitic transformation.

The aim of this work is to evaluate the microstructural evolutions developed by mixing a corrosion-resistant and high-performance material with a high-hardness material in a coating obtained by laser-cladding technology. In this paper, five different mixtures of Inconel 625 alloy and AISI H13 steel powders have been deposited on a plate of 42CrMo4 steel using a 2.2 kW diode pumped Nd:YAG laser. The effect of adding tool steel to a Ni-based superalloy has been analyzed by the characterization of each cladded sample using optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The precipitates observed in the samples have been analyzed by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS X-ray). SEM micrographs and EDS analysis indicate the existence of Laves phase. It has been observed that the presence of these precipitates is stabilized in a certain range of AISI H13 addition.

Although treatments at cryogenic temperatures have been known for decades, these processes are still far from being common in industry. This can be blamed to a great extent on insufficient understanding of the permanent effects caused by low temperatures in the materials. Many of the applications of cryogenic treatments have been developed empirically, with little attention to the nature of the transformations generated in the materials. This often leads to inconsistent industrial results because the particularities of the different materials and the influence of previous treatments are hardly taken into account. Nevertheless, the consideration of these parameters is essential to adequately address the study of cryogenic treatments and their industrial implementation. Cryogenic treatments are operations that should be considered and analyzed as a part of the overall heat treatment scheme rather than as isolated actions. This study presents some examples that show the outcomes obtained in two steel grades by applying various combinations of heat and cryogenic treatments. It can be concluded that the way in which they are combined is determinant for the final performance (regarding hardness, toughness, corrosion resistance, etc.) obtained in each case.