Wear characteristics of Stellite6 and NOREM02 hardfaced SKD61 hot working tool steel at the elevated temperature

Recently, interest in hardfacing technology has steadily increased in effort to improve wear characteristics of hot forming dies. The objective of this paper is to investigate wear characteristics of Stellite6 and NOREM02 hardfaced SKD61 hot working tools steel at the elevated temperature. Stellite6 and NOREM02 superalloys are deposited onto the SKD61 hot working tool steel using the laser-aided direct metal rapid tooling (DMT) process. In order to examine the influence of the hardfacing materials on the hardness of hardfaced specimens, hardness experiments are performed beyond the full annealing temperature of the SKD61 material. Pin-on-disk experiments are carried out to examine wear characteristics, including the worn volume, the worn depth, the worn width, and the friction induced work hardening, of the hardfaced specimens at the elevated temperature. The morphology in the vicinity of the worn region is observed by a digital microscope and a scanning electronic microscope (SEM) to investigate the formation and the microstructure of the worn region. In addition, the efficiency of the hardfaced specimen is discussed via the comparison of wear characteristics of superalloy hardfaced specimens with those of the SKD61 specimen.