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Steels for Moulds, Tools and Dies

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  • Our expertise
  • Useful documents
  • Our solutions
  • Prehardened mould steels
  • Prehardened holder steels
  • Corrosion-resistant mould steels
  • Cold work tool steels
  • Hot work tool steels
  • Mechanical applications

Our expertise

  • EAF route with careful selection of raw materials to produce high purity steel.
  • Fine tuned secondary metallurgy with vacuum and degassing processes (AOD, VOD) to achieve high cleanliness steels.
  • Heavy and wide quarto plates produced by continuous casting or bottom poured ingot with a comprehensive dimensional range.
  • A dedicated world-class research and development center providing technical support and developing new products to meet market needs
  • A global sales network guaranteeing single point of contact in your geographical area and being your representative with our mills.
  • A web-based customer service providing access to order confirmations, invoices, order status and mill test certificates.

Useful documents

  • Mold, tool and die steels program
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  • Mold tool and die steels brochure
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Our solutions

Prehardened mould steels

Advantages
  • Within our mold steels range your will find a solution suitable for all kind of plastic parts that vary in material, size, complexity and application. Our steels can be used for all plastic moulding processes such as injection, compression, blow and rubber moulding.
  • Producing high quality injection moulds and plastic parts in a cost effective way is a daily challenge for moldmakers, moulders and OEM. Superplast® is a complete range of premium mould steels dedicated to the plastic injection moulding business. Superplast® grades are delivered prehardened from 300 Brinell to 400 Brinell to produce mould cores, cavities and holders
  • The concept of Superplast® steels is based on a lean analysis for a better machining combined to boron metallurgy for an extra high through homogeneity. Thanks to this, Superplast steels provide reliable machining, consistent surface finish and texturing, improved thermal conductivity, easy weld repair and high mechanical strength for a large dimensional range (up to 1300mm thickness).

Prehardened holder steels

Advantages
  • Materials used for individual mould construction into which the cavities, cooling system and drill holes are inserted. They are used for many plastic moulding processes such as injection, compression and rubber moulding.
  • The steel requirements are: machinability, hardness, strength, dimensional stability and repair weldability

Corrosion-resistant mould steels

Advantages
  • Mould components used to process chemically aggressive plastics (PVC, PET) or for humid / corrosive working conditions Suitable for many plastic moulding processes such as extrusion, injection, blow and compression moulding.
  • Sulfured grades (2085, SPStainless) are advised for holders where the requirements are machinability and dimensional stability whereas low-sulfur grades (2316, 2083) are advised for high surface finish requirements (polishing for instance).
  • Superplast® Stainless is a low carbon free machining stainless holder steel. Thanks to its original chemistry and optimized heat treatment, Superplast® Stainless provides much higher machinability than standard 1.2085 with a similar corrosion resistance. It is delivered ready-for-use for mould frames and mould cavities with standard surface finish requirements.

Cold work tool steels

Advantages
  • Industeel produces extra wide tool steel plates (2000 x 4000 mm) suitable to cover a large range of applications with outstanding metallurgical quality for reliable in service tool performance. A wide variety of tools are required in industry for cutting, shearing, stamping, or extrusion operations. To make these tools, you need steels combining specific properties, especially hardness, wear resistance, toughness, cracking resistance and machinability. The right steel is also to be determined regarding the final use of the tool, for instance shearing, cutting or stamping.
  • Industeel offers a wide range of standard steel grades for toolmaking and also special steels such as TENASTEEL® which might enable you to make substantial savings with longer tool life time. Tenasteel is a cold work tool steel, combining a high compression strength and a very good toughness. Its other advantages are a particularly high resistance to thermal softening and a good machinability in the asdelivery condition. The steel is delivered in the soft annealed condition with a maximum hardness of 250 HB.
  • Tenasteel® is specially designed to replace D2/X160CrMoV12/W1.2379 type steels widely used by tool makers but suffering from an excessive brittleness. Thanks to its chemistry increasing resistance to softening during tempering, Tenasteel® is especially suited for all processes of surface treatment and coatings commonly used by end – users. Tenasteel® can replace D2 type steels in all applications.

Hot work tool steels

Advantages
  • Die casting industry is very cautious in the selection of hot work tool steels to manufacture die casting dies. In the production of long series, die life time is the first requirement, and tool steel quality / properties will always prevails on its cost, which does not mean that there is no need for cost saving in the die manufacture.
  • Industeel has developed a unique process ensuring a structural homogeneity of forged blocks without using a remelting process. Thus properties of forged blocks meet requirements of international die casting standards and are very similar to those of ESR or VAR products. We can provide a cost efficient alternative to remelted products for die casting dies. ISOTROP is a high quality hot work tool steel (W1.2343 / W1.2344 / H11 /H13 modified) obtained thanks to this special solidification process.

Associated industries

Mechanical Engineering
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