Novel high alloying hot-work tool steel with enhanced wear resistance prepared by laser additive manufacturing

Traditional tool steel has been unable to meet the development of modern industry. Optimizing the performance of tool steel is a hot research topic at present. In this study, H13 steel and a novel high alloying element hot-work tool steel (HA-H13) were successfully fabricated by laser additive manufacturing and tempered at different temperatures. The phase, microstructure, hardness and wear resistance of two steels were characterized by XRD, SEM, EDS, hardness testing and wear testing. The results show that compared to the H13 steel, the newly designed HA-H13 steel exhibits massive coarse carbides in the matrix and more nanometer-sized carbides were precipitated after tempering. Due to the strong loading capacity and higher hardness of the coarse carbides, HA-H13 steel shows superior wear resistance. In particular, tempered HA-H13 steel presents excellent wear resistance during wear testing at 25 degrees C and 450 degrees C because coarse MC carbides with superior anchorage properties easily form continuous and compact oxide layers to resist wear.