Measurement of Adhesive Wear on Hot Forming Tools

Tool wear is one of the main concerns in hot stamping tools. Tool life, part complexity and quality and tool maintenance schedules are all greatly affected by wear mechanisms changing the tool surface. This is particularly true in the case of the commonly used Aluminium-Silicon coated Boron steel, where material transfer from the sheet metal coating to the tool surface generates macroscopic damages in a relatively low number of cycles. In this work, two non-destructive techniques (direct measurement through optical profilometry and indirect measurement through surface replication) have been applied to characterize adhesive wear on tool steel inserts obtained from two different high temperature strip drawing based setups for simulation of the process of hot stamping of Al Si coated boron steel. The obtained measurements have been validated by analysing cross sectional samples of the studied inserts. Results show the applicability of these non-destructive techniques to the characterization of adhesive wear on industrial tools, which can be used to optimise tool maintenance methods and schedules.