Evaluation of the impact of different heat treatments on the toughness and tempering resustance for a Cr-Mo-V hot-work tool steel

Abstract: High Pressure Die Casting (HPDC) has very high demands on toughness and tempering resistance of the tool. A typical hardening cycle for this purpose consists on austenitizing and quenching in a vacuum furnace followed by three temperings at 600°C. In this work the possibility of optimizing the toughness and tempering resistance in Uddeholm Dievar by adding an extra tempering at the beginning and/or the end of the tempering process is investigated. Extra temperings were performed at 300-400° and hardness levels, impact toughness and tempering resistance were evaluated. Microstructural investigations as well as thermodynamical calculations were also carried out. Results showed no feasible differences between the results of the here conducted tests and those from the common tempering procedures.