Surface coating for non-lubricated deep drawing of stainless steel

• Applicant: Dr.-Ing. Thomas Seefeld
• Subject Area: Primary Shaping and Reshaping Technology, Additive Manufacturing
• Term: from 2013 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 244949081

In dry sheet metal forming of stainless steel, adhesive wear is a problem arising from intense contact with the forming tool. A suitable coating of the tool surface is thus required. The aim of this project is to enable non-lubricated forming of stainless steel sheet by a plateau out of hard particles standing out of the matrix in order to increase wear resistance and durability, and to lessen the metallic nature of the surface to protect the tool surface against adhesive wear. Therefore, a process chain involving laser beam cladding for layer deposition on 3d tool geometries and laser ablation for micro machining of the functional surfaces shall be applied. the focus of the first funding period was on the generation and characterization of surface coatings for deep drawing tools. The second period addressed the understanding of the tribological behavior of the materials during dry forming and main influences including hard particle size and distance, the contact area ratio, and the ablated depth of the metal matrix. The behavior of such surface coatings in a dry deep drawing application was analyzed and assessed in comparison to a lubricated drawing process. The emphasis of the third funding period is to increase the contact area ratio of the tool surface in the areas of high loads by melting and agglomeration of the hard particles to generate an adapted tool surface to meet the various load capacities in a dry deep drawing process.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1676: Dry Metal Forming - Sustainable Production through Dry Processing in Metal Forming
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr.-Ing. Frank Vollertsen