The conventional production of tool steels is through normal steelmaking route, ingot casting or continuous cast (CC), annealing and final inspection. From these products tools and dies are manufactured through traditional machining operations using lathes, drillers, CNC machines, wire cut or EDM processes.
During the past years the so called composite powder-metallurgy (PM) and powder spray forming (PSF) technologies have been developed to be implemented in industry and is suitable to produce high alloyed tool steels on an industrial scale. The metal spray formed tool steel parts proved to have homogeneous, uniform and fine microstructure if compared with PM or conventionally produced cold-work tool steel especially in texture and mechanical properties. Industrial applications advocate that tools made using spray formed steel had higher performance and life time than those produced through conventional route.
High toughness is required in case of steel grades used for pressing dies which depends on contents of alloying elements (chromium, molybdenum, vanadium and tungsten). In case of drop forging dies a wide properties are required and the standard steel grades are different from each other according to their usage in specific type of die or tool parts. Balanced combination of strength, toughness, adhesion resistance and other properties are required. Dies produced using PM or metal spray forming are tested in as forged conditions and it was found that the lifetime of the dies is increased in average by 50 % higher than that obtained from the conventional standard tool steel.