Strategies of Heating and Hardening External Corners on the Example of Bending Tools for Press Brakes.

In the paper the methods of laser hardening of external tool corners on the example of bending tools for press brakes were presented. The disadvantages and limitations of the most commonly used techniques for guiding a hardening laser light beam are presented, i.e.: (i) in one pass parallel to the tool corner plane symmetry, (ii) in two passes perpendicular to the surfaces adjacent to the corner, and (iii) in one pass perpendicular to the surface adjacent to the corner by using two diode lasers. The microstructure of the tool material after laser and induction hardening was compared. A significant influence of the heating method on the microstructure of the tool material after hardening was demonstrated. The original method of hardening the outer corners of bending tools using a hardening laser beam splitter was subject to a more detailed analysis. The analysis of material heating in simultaneously hardened corner area and adjacent surfaces was carried out using the Marc/Mentat software based on the finite element method. By analyzing the temperature distributions it was shown that if a beam splitter was used, obtaining a continuous and uniform hardened layer (i.e. with comparable hardness, depth, without tempered or non-tempered areas) in the area of the outer corner and adjacent surfaces was possible. In practice, achieving such a layer is conditioned by the correct selection of the size of the k parameter which determines the distance between the separated beams of laser light. Depending on the geometry of the hardened tool corner and the parameters of the hardening laser beam, this distance can be determined experimentally or on the basis of numerical simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]