1. The hardening convex R position of the wire drawing die and the surface with a large flow of sheet metal need to have high wear resistance and high hardness.
Due to the large hardening area, conventional flame hardening or induction hardening will cause large thermal deformation of the workpiece, resulting in the inability to guarantee the accuracy of the mold, and then need to add other technological means to ensure it, which will inevitably lead to a long mold processing cycle and prone to hardness unstable situation. Therefore, we switched to the laser hardening method, so that the deformation of the workpiece is small, or even no deformation, and the quality requirements can be met without adding other technological means.
We use laser hardening to harden the inner panel of the door of a certain model and use blue light scanning to detect the surface changes before and after the hardening. The surface of the mold after laser hardening can meet the precision requirements.
2. Surface hardening of inserts: The surface hardening of inserts on automobile molds mainly refers to the hardening of trimming inserts in trimming dies and the hardening of shaping inserts in shaping dies.
For trimming inserts or shaping inserts, after conventional flame hardening, the deformation of the inserts is relatively large, and secondary processing is required to eliminate deformation after hardening. The production cycle of the workpiece is long, and the hardening hardness is difficult to control, especially for forming inserts, since the forming surface needs to be hardened, the hardening area is large, and tempering is very easy to occur, resulting in unqualified surface hardness. After research and practice, we found that laser hardening can effectively control the deformation and unqualified hardness of inserts.
3. Application of laser hardening to optimize mold processing technology Compared with traditional flame hardening, laser hardening can optimize mold processing technology, thereby effectively shortening the manufacturing cycle and reducing manufacturing costs. The following is a comparison of the process flow of flame hardening and laser hardening.
Flame hardening mold processing process: surface roughing→semi-finishing→flame hardening→processing to eliminate deformation→fitter assembly→surface finishing→debugging→research→delivery.
Laser hardening mold processing process: surface roughing → semi-finishing → fitter assembly → surface finishing → laser hardening → debugging, research and matching.
The use of laser hardening molds and surface finishing before hardening not only avoids the deformation process and improves the efficiency of finishing, but also improves the mold processing efficiency of laser hardening by more than 30% compared with flame hardening.
4. The effect of laser hardening on the surface quality of the mold. Compared with the traditional hardening method, the surface deformation of the mold using the laser hardening method is small and the hardness is uniform. Therefore, hardening is performed after the surface finishing is in place.
After the flame-hardening mold is finished, there is a step difference in the profile, resulting in unqualified profile quality. However, for molds that are finished in place and then laser hardened, because the surface has no hardness during finishing, this situation will not occur during processing; after finishing in place, laser hardening is performed, because the deformation after hardening is very small, and good results can be obtained. Mold surface quality, to meet customer requirements for mold surface quality,
The industry is about to enter the "Industry 4.0" era. The automotive industry is facing many demands from end customers for product informatization, intelligence, personalization, and environmental protection. OEMs have higher and higher requirements on the development cycle of body molds. The shorter the length, the higher the quality requirements. While ensuring stable hardening hardness and quality, laser hardening technology effectively shortens the mold manufacturing cycle, saves manufacturing costs, and solves many problems that cannot be solved by traditional heat treatment processes. Therefore, laser hardening technology will be more and more widely used in automotive molds.