Surface treatments of forged steel AISI6F3 by using high power CO2 laser

Abstract

Abstract The hardness of forging dies is highly affected by the hot forming processes; especially by the long exposure to a wide thermal range, which leads to a decline in the level of hardness due to the tempering of the microstructure, thus failure occurs and the die breaks. The microstructure and hardness have been studied to demonstrate the relationship between them and their direct effect on the regions generated by the laser treatment of high capacity. The selected samples were chosen within a combination of laser variables to reach the appropriate structure that achieves the best hardness and indeed the highest hardness value (965 Hv) with laser processing parameters included the power 3000 W, beam diameter 1mm and scanning speed 25 mm/s with its characteristic microstructure as well as its high cooling rate.