Tool Steel

thyssenkrupp Materials Romania offers its customers a broad range of tool steels in different grades and dimensions and constantly develops its product and service spectrum further. Tool steel represents a mixture of carbon and alloy steels that are designed for mechanical tools production.

Their suitability arises from their distinctive hardness, resistance to abrasion, and deformation as well as their ability to hold a cutting edge at elevated temperatures. As a result, tool steels are suited for their use in the shaping of other materials. With a proportion of carbon between 0.5% and 1.5%, tool steels are manufactured under carefully controlled conditions to produce the required quality.

The presence of carbides in their matrix plays the dominant role in the qualities of tool steel. Proper heat treatment of these steels is important for adequate performance. There are several groups of tool steels, depending on cost, working temperature, required surface hardness, strength, shock resistance, and toughness requirements. The more severe the service condition (higher temperature, abrasiveness, corrosiveness, loading), the higher the alloy content and consequently the amount of carbides required for the tool steel.

Tool steels are used for cutting, pressing, extruding, and coining of metals and other materials. Their use, such as the production of injection molds, is essential, due to their resistance to abrasion, which is an important criterion for a mold that will be used to produce hundreds of thousands of moldings for a product or part.