Experimental Analysis and Mechanical Characterization of AISI P20 Tool Steel Through Heat-Treatment Process

AISI P20 is special-purpose tool steel used to produce injection molds and casting dies which should have desired properties like higher wear resistance, toughness, and hardness. The heat-treatment is established to be a vital process for the manufacturing of any product using tool steel. As the microstructure changes incurred during the process, tool steel have a greater impact on the overall characteristics. This paper investigates the changes in microstructure and phases of tool steel by following six different heat-treatment procedures. After austenitizing temperature, tool steel are cooled at − 50 °C, − 100 °C, and − 150 °C temperature. Surface morphology and phases analysis has been carried out using SEM and XRD, respectively. The micro-hardness, impact strength, wear test, compression test are measured using the micro-hardness tester machine, charpy test machine, pin-on-disc wear test rig, and universal testing machine, respectively. It is found that hard martensitic phase is developed for direct quenched material (both in water and in LN2) giving maximum hardness and its percentage increases with an increase in the cooling rate. Sub-cooled metal with − 150 °C has higher surface hardness as compared to lower temperature processes. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.