Benefits and properties of laser-hardened tool steel surfaces

Abstract

Laser hardening brings a great increase in part life and it is an industry-proven process, typically used for hardening of molds, gears, shafts etc. It was mainly the recent advancement of diode lasers that turned it into a competitive process. The paper describes the nature of residual stresses, the influence on hardness and fatigue properties of such parts. Investigations have to be performed in order to gain a comprehensive knowledge about effects on microstructure, hardness, surface properties of treated materials, but also mechanical an particularly fatigue properties. Concerning fatigue resistance of material treated with this technology, results and knowledge recently published in the literature indicate that fatigue resistance can be either reduced or increased, even considerably, depending on numerous parameters of basic material, laser hardening parameters etc. This contribution contains results of a partial study of effect of laser hardening of relatively small specimens on fatigue resistance of 42CrMo4 steel. Two different parameters of the treatment were used, namely two speeds of laser beam on the material surface at constant beam energy. Unlike the lower speed, when fatigue resistance was slightly reduced, higher speed of laser beam resulted in a slight increase of fatigue resistance and fatigue limit. The results are discussed considering an occurrence of residuals stresses.