THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE RETAINED AUSTENITE REDUCTION ON TOOL STEELS

The retained austenite induces a great deal of internal stress in the steel, often manifesting itself as cracks. Retained austenite also have a negative effect on dimensional stability of the steel components. In tool steels retained austenite is considered to be highly detrimental and is the cause of many application failures. Tool steels must be able to attain high hardness, high compressive strength, good toughness to be suitable for forming of advanced high-strength steels. The high alloying elements content tool steels result is low martensite start and martensite finish temperatures. As a result, the transformation of austenite to martensite does not go to completion when quenching to room temperature. In this work the effects of tempering and cryogenic treatment were investigated for reducing the amount of residual austenite in case of a cold work tool steel and a hot work tool steel. The results showed that in the case of tool steels, during high hardening and three times tempering at high temperatures, the amount of residual austenite was significantly reduced and as a result of cryogenic treatment completely disappeared.