Die soldering occurs when molten aluminum sticks to the surface of a die material and remains there after the ejection of the part. This resulted in low productivity and economic value in the foundry industry. Nitriding surface treatment is considered as an effective way in enhancing the service life of AISI H13 steel dies and to prevent soldering effect. The focus of this paper is to investigate the influence of three different surface conditions in terms of roughness, gas nitriding and pretreatment prior to gas nitriding on the soldering effect. Three kind of samples made of AISI H13 steel were pretreated (quenched and tempered) and followed by : shot peened, gas nitrided and shot peening followed by gas nitriding, were immersed in liquid melted ADC 12 Aluminium alloy at 30 seconds, 30 minutes, 2 hours and 5 hours, at a constant temperature of 680oC in a holding furnace. Characterizations on the surface of the steel were focused on the optical microstructure, microhardness profile, FE SEM observation and enegy dispersive spectrometry mapping. It was found that shot peening prior to nitriding gives a higher surface hardness and depth of nitride layer of H13 tool steel, 1140 HV (>70 HRC) and 120.5 μm, than the nitriding only process, 1033 HV (68 HRC) and 105 μm. The higher the hardness and depth of nitride layer expected would reduce the die soldering effect at the surface of the H13 tool steel dies. It was also found that the only shot peening treatment resulted in a tendency of soldering accompanied by the formation of intermetallic layers ; while soldering is not found on the nitrided and shot peened-nitrided samples.
Microstructure evolution during binder jet additive manufacturing of H13 tool steel
