What is Mold Steel ?

What is Mold Steel ?

Mold steel is a material that is used to manufacture the molds, including cold-punching mould, hot forging die, die-casting mold, and more. The mold is the main processing tool for the industry of machinery manufacturing, motor, radiometers and etc. The quality of mold would directly impact the quality of processing technic, the precision and output of products and more. Its grades, specification and quality determine the properties, life and manufacturing period of die.

Mold Steel Types

It has three branches, including hot rolled mold steel, cold rolled mold steel and plastic mold steel. They are used for the forging, punching, pressure casting and more. Due to the different mold playing a different role in the production, so we need to make it by the requirements of working to satisfy the needs of hardness, strength, wear resistance, hardenability and more. So that causes the different types of mold steel has different properties.

Cold Rolled Mold Steel

Cold rolled mold includes cold-punching mould, wire-drawing die, cold heading die and more. Cold rolled mold steel always belong to high carbon alloy steel, its carbon content is beyond 0.80%. And chromium is a big alloy element for this steel type, its content is less than 5%. And the common steel type for it is high carbon low alloy steel, high carbon high chromium steel, chrome molybdenum steel and etc.

Hot Rolled Mold Steel

There are several types for hot rolled mold, they are hammer forge, die forging, pressure casting and etc. For example, hot-forging die, press forging die, punching die, hot-extrusion die and more. It must suffer high mechanical stress and the effect of in cold and hot repeatedly, that would make huge thermal stress. So the hot rolled mould steel must have high hardness, strength, red hardness, wear-resistance and toughness.

On the other hand, great high-temperature strength, thermal fatigue stability, thermal conductivity and corrosion resistance are what they need. And it needs to have high hardenability to make sure the mechanical property of hole section is the same. For this type of steel, they commonly are medium carbon alloy steel, the carbon content at the range of 0.30%-0.60%. The common type for it is chromium manganese steel, chrome-nickel steel, chrome-tungsten steel and more.

Plastic Mold Steel

The plastic molds including thermosetting plastics mold and thermoplastic plastics mold. It must have the same properties of mold steel. Besides that, great processing property is what they need. Such as the small heat treatment deformation, good corrosion resistance and polishing performance and more. In general, injection mold and extrusion forming mould can use the hot-rolled mould steel. And if the mold with high wear resistance and strength requirements, cold rolled mold steel also is the good choice.