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Welding with an electric arc is mainly used as a joining technology, where a high energy input is required locally for the joining process. Due to the heat input, the welded bead is characterized by a heat affected zone, that consists of an inhomogeneous microstructure of different phases and grain sizes. This leads to non-optimal mechanical properties.
One way to improve the microstructure is to induce plastic deformation (e.g. by rolling), which can enable recrystallization mechanisms, that homogenize the microstructure and therefore can optimize the material properties. Yet, the recrystallization mechanisms require a minimum temperature to be activated. On one hand, the in-situ heat input during welding can be used for this in a process combination of welding and rolling but might not be enough, to reach or hold this recrystallization temperature during rolling. An excessive heat input on the other hand leads to too high temperatures, causing significant grain growth, that also negatively affect the mechanical properties. In any case, a certain temperature range over time has to be maintained.
The temperature can be controlled by burners for pre-heating and post-heating, and the heating power can be controlled separately. In this numerical study, burner heat models are used to simulate the temperature-controlled process combination of welding one single bead with a subsequent rolling step for the mild steel St37/S235JR. The influence of the pre- and post-heating could be numerically proven and suitable heating combinations were found, that allow a full recrystallization with a nearly homogenous grain size distribution.
Additive technologies are now widely used for the production of complex precise parts and have high potential for the production of forming dies. In this work, hot-forming dies optimized for additive manufacturing were developed and produced with wire arc direct energy deposition (WA-DED) and laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) technologies. The concept of lightweight hot-forming dies with a 2D-lattice structure was developed, which reduced the weight of each die by 56%, from 14.2 kg to 6.1 kg, in production using L-PBF. Maraging/precipitation-hardened steel 17-4PH was used as an alternative to traditional hot-working steels with slightly lower mechanical properties and a much higher processability in the additive manufacturing process. The workability of the manufactured dies was confirmed by forging tests on an industrial screw press.
Press-hardening is an important metal sheet manufacturing process to improve the metal sheet properties during forming with an inline quenching process. This requires higher cooling rates often obtained by cooling channels within the tools, that enable the formation of martensite for a high strength. The manufacturing of those forming tools with internal cooling channels is quite complex, time and material consuming and therefore expensive. Optimal cooling channel geometry cannot be realized by conventional machining operations, that limits cooling efficiency too.
Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) is a layer-wise welding process, that allows the manufacturing of near net shapes and internal cooling channels. In contrast to conventional machining, manufacturing of a complex lightweight design forming tool can be realized by WAAM. This will further reduce the WAAM process time and material consumption. However, the lightweight design reduces on one hand the thermal mass and thus the capability of heat transfer, making cooling via the cooling channels more crucial. On the other hand, elastic tool
deformation has to be as low as possible.
In this study, a press-hardening forming tool made of S235JR is designed and manufactured by means of WAAM. FEM analysis are performed to optimize the design of the forming tool regarding lightweight aspects. Simple near net shapes of cooling channels are considered for a simplification of the WAAM process. The forming tool is mechanically tested to compare and evaluate the stiffness with the FEM analysis.
Due to their versatile advantages, the use of additively manufactured components is growing. In addition, new additive manufacturing processes are constantly being developed, so that a wide range of printing processes are now available for metal. Despite the same starting material, the microstructure and thus also the final mechanical properties differ greatly compared to conventional processes. In most cases, only direction-dependent characteristic values from the uniaxial tension are used to qualify a printing process before it is used. The literature, on the other hand, demonstrates that the results are not transferable to other loading conditions. In this work, several engineering tests were integrated into a single test specimen so that they can be determined on the same specimen. The test specimen can be used to test tooth root strength, bending strength, notched bar impact energy, and thread strength depending on the mounting direction, thus representing industrial loading cases. In this study, test specimens were fabricated by conventional manufacturing (machining), L-PBF (Laser Powder Bed Fusion), and WA-DED (Wire Arc Direct Energy Deposition), and the results were compared using statistical methods. Factors to capture manufacturing influence and buildup direction were statistically validated on 316L. The work shows a benchmark with a typical initial microstructure of rolled and milled material, L-PBF, and WA-DED parts on loads close to the application and thus simplifies an industry-oriented evaluation of a new manufacturing process.
With a view of sustainability and the rising energy costs currently, manufacturing processes of metals are becoming increasingly focused on optimizing process parameters such as energy and time consumption. A conventional hot-forming process route currently involves casting an ingot, letting it cool down, and heating it up again for the hot-forming process (see Fig. 1a). In order to implement the combination of casting and forging, avoiding the reheating cycle and using less energy, by utilizing the casting heat (see Fig. 1b), a methodology was developed within the present work to quantify the influence of the resulting microstructure as a function of the cooling rate on the forming and recrystallization behavior (see Fig. 1c).
For this purpose, AISI 301 austenitic stainless-steel cast samples with different cast cooling rates were generated. An in-situ high-temperature microscope is used to determine the holding time and the heating rate. Dilatometer tests are performed to characterize the interaction between initial microstructure and the flow curves to verify the determination method (see Fig. 1d). The aim was to demonstrate whether the microstructure evolution and mechanical behavior is affected by the initial microstructure. The flow curves and the post-forming microstructure show a higher degree of recrystallization in fast-cooled microstructure than slow-cooled microstructure. Hence, it was found that the initial microstructure and the associated temperature history does have an impact on the mechanical properties.