Damage, Lifetime, and Repair of Forging Dies

The life time of forging dies is essential for economic production. The forging conditions and the characteristic tool damage vary from part to part, which makes a life time prediction very difficult. By means of three case studies, it is shown that the knowledge of the dominant damage mechanism is the key to finding out proper counter-measures or repair technologies. Best practice processing and repair technologies are discussed in this paper. Common tool materials are listed and assigned to their proper usage. Plasma-nitriding without white layer is proposed to be a good economic and technical compromise, when compared to other surface technologies. Finally, the potential of automatic tooling for die repair is pointed out.