Tooling materials and solutions for thixoforming steel: A key to the process industrialization

Investigations on steel thixoforming started in the early 90’s and many developments were carried out, mainly driven by the industrialization of the process. After a series of basic investigations on adapted steels and materials as well as near-net shaping investigations, the issue of mass production raised and thus induced some other challenges mainly on die life and process automation and cycling. High working temperatures and components complexity were then the main locks to mass productions. In most of reported literature, none of the involved research group reached or real production and industrialization criteria. The euro group holds most of these research investigations [1]. We have reported many of these results in previous communications and this paper presents a continuity of what have already been presented. Some advanced tooling materials and solutions are presented and applied to a real complex industrial component. © (2015) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.