The Effect of Dwell Time on Die Wear in High Speed Hot Forging

Abstract

This paper describes an automatic high energy-rate forging system, consisting of a Petro-forge machine linked to an induction furnace with an automatic billet transfer mechanism. The system contains also automatic die lubrication, as well as pyrometric and other safety interlocks, permitting the feeding and forging of hot billets at a rate of one every 5 s. Hot upsetting tests carried out with this automatic forging system, aiming at the determination of the effect of dwell time on die wear, are discussed. Two series of experiments were carried out, with dwell times of 40 and 250 ms respectively. In the shorter dwell time tests, five different die materials were evaluated with the aim of establishing their relative wear resistance. It was found that the higher alloyed die steels offer improved performance over the conventional low alloy steels, ‘good value for money’ being obtained by WEX 779. An analysis of the dwell time, performed by taking a high speed cine film of the whole forging operation, showed that it consisted of forging, bouncing and after-forging phases. In both the short and the long dwell time tests the forging phase and the bouncing phase were 4 and 30 ms, respectively. However, the after-forge phase was 6 ms for the short dwell time and 216 ms for the long dwell time experiments. During the after-forge phase, the dies, with the upset workpiece between them, are pressed together by a relatively small force and in view of this heat transfer is poor. Nevertheless, the increase of the dwell time has a very large effect on die wear, doubling the rate of wear in some cases, depending on the type of die material used.