• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.370-378
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• 2018

Cold forging, carried out at room temperature, leads to high dimensional accuracy and excellent surface integrity as compared to other forging methods such as warm and hot forgings. In the cold forging process, WC-Co (Tungsten Carbide-Cobalt) alloy is the mainly used material as a core dies because of its superior hardness and strength as compared to other structural materials. For cold forging, die life is the most significant factor because it is directly related to the manufacturing cost due to periodic die replacement in mass production. To investigate die life of WC-Co alloy for cold forging, mechanical properties such as strength and fatigue are essentially necessary. Generally, uniaxial tensile test and fatigue test are the most efficient and simplest testing method. However, uniaxial tension is not efficiently application to WC-Co alloy because of its sensitivity to alignment of the specimen due to its brittleness and difficulty in thread machining. In this study, shape of specimen, tools, and testing methods, which are appropriate for uniaxial tensile test for WC-Co alloy, are proposed. The test results such as Young's modulus, tensile strength and stress-strain curves are compared to those in previous literature to validate the proposed testing methods. Based on the validation of test results it was concluded that the newly developed testing method is applicable to other cemented carbides like Titanium carbides with high strength and brittleness, and also can be utilized to carry out fatigue tests for further investigation on die life of cold forging.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Heat Treatment
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.270-276
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• 2023

In this study, we analyzed two types of cold forging dies commonly used for manufacturing general nuts and screws to investigate the differences in WC powder according to the lifespan. For both Type I and Type II dies, it was observed that as the lifespan of the molds increases, the area fraction of Co becomes larger and the size of the powder becomes smaller. Moreover, there is a trend where the strength also increases as the lifespan gets longer. Actually, the hardness value of the sample with the longest lifespan is ~ 131 HV higher than the specimen of the shortest lifespan, It is noted that the reduction in toughness of the WC-Co mold is caused by insufficient Co and the decrease in contact surface area of WC-Co results in a reduced bonding surface area. The lifespan of cold-working WC molds increases when the W content and the volume fraction of WC are high, and the size of the WC powder is small. The results can significantly enhance producing high-quality molds with an extended lifespan using WC powder for cold forging.