What’s The Most Important And Decisive Factor For Choose Tool Steel?

Forming method–can choose from two kind of basic material

A) Hot working tool steel, it can afford high temperature during casting, forging and extrusive.

B) Cold working tool steel, usually used for blanking, shearing, cold forming, cold extrusive, cold forge and powder pressure molding.

Plastic–some plastic will producing corrosive by-products, such as PVC plastic. Condensation caused by long time suspension, corrosive air, sour, cooling/heating, water or storage condition etc all can producing corrosive. Under these circumstances, we recommend you use stainless steel tool steel.

Tool size–big tool usually use pre-hardening tool steel. And quenching steel is better to used for small size tool.

Tool usage count– For long-term use(>1 000 000 times) tools should using high hardness steel, hardness 48-65HRC. Middle time use(1 00 000 – 1 000 000 times) tools need using pre-hardening steel, hardness 30-45HRC. For short time use(< 100 000 times) tools using soft steel, hardness 160-250HB.

Surface roughness–many plastic mold manufacturers are interested in goof surface roughness. Tool surface quality will be reduced while adding sulfur to improve the metal cutting performance. Steel with high sulfur contents also become more brittle.