Optimized plasma nitriding processes for efficient wear reduction of forging dies

Plasma nitriding treatments are approved to reduce wear occurring in the field of hot forging applications. But there are demands for a further optimization of the processes in order to achieve adapted properties for differently loaded forging tools. This work presents the influence of main process parameters on the wear behavior of dies. The focused steel material of this work is DIN-X38CrMoV5-1 (1.2343), a standard hot forming tool steel. The influence of nitriding parameters like temperature, nitrogen flow and time on the nitriding depth, hardness and crack sensitivity has been investigated. Comparative application tests show the influence of different surface treatments on the wear behavior and lifetime of forging tools in an industrial environment.