Combined Heat Treatment Characteristics of Cast Iron for Mold Materials

Abstract

Currently, there are two main issues regarding the development of core technologies in the automotive industry: the development of environmentally friendly vehicles and securing a high level of safety in the event of an accident. As part of the efforts to address these issues, research into alternative materials and new car body manufacturing and assembly technologies is necessary, and this has been carried out mainly by the automotive industries. Large press molds for producing car body parts are made of cast iron. With the increase of automobile production and various changes of design, the press forming process of car body parts has become more difficult. In the case of large press molds, high hardness and abrasive resistance are needed. To overcome these problems, we attempted to develop a combined heat treatment process consisting of local laser heat treatment followed by plasma nitriding, and evaluated the characteristics of the proposed heat treatment method. From the results of the experiments, it has been shown that the maximum surface hardness is 864 Hv by the laser heat treatment, 953 Hv by the plasma nitriding, and 1,094 Hv by the combined heat treatment. It is anticipated that the suggested combined heat treatment can be used to evaluate the durability of press mold.