The Effect of Processing on The Surface and Subsurface Characteristic of Plastic Injection Mold Steel

Abstract

AISI P20 is prehardened mold steel that is commonly used to manufacture plastic injection molding. The surface characteristics of molds play crucial role to control plastic injected molds parts. Besides, the characteristic of molds is mainly influenced by machining process, the manufacturing process to produce molds. This study presents the extensive experimental work focusing on the machining processing conditions on the surface characteristics of Plastic Injection mold steels. The input parameters are cutting speeds, feed rates and cutting inserts’ geometry (wiper and non-wiper). The measured output parameters are subsurface hardness of machined parts and phase transformation induced from cutting process. Experimental results show that wiper insert significantly helps to improve surface quality of components. Besides, microhardness measurement shows that thermal softening occurs resulting from machining of this alloy. XRD data illustrates peak broadening and increased intensity with machined samples.