5mm Tool Steel

[Cecila Dammrich]

Toolsteel is any of various carbon steels and alloy steels that are particularly well-suited to be made into tools and tooling, including cutting tools, dies, hand tools, knives, and others. Their suitability comes from their distinctive hardness, resistance to abrasion and deformation, and their ability to hold a cutting edge at elevated temperatures. As a result, tool steels are suited for use in the shaping of other materials, as for example in cutting, machining, stamping, or forging.

Tool steels have a carbon content between 0.5% and 1.5%. The presence of carbides in their matrix plays the dominant role in the qualities of tool steel. The four major alloying elements that form carbides in tool steel are: tungsten, chromium, vanadium and molybdenum. The rate of dissolution of the different carbides into the austenite form of the iron determines the high-temperature performance of steel (slower is better, making for a heat-resistant steel). Proper heat treatment of these steels is important for adequate performance.[1] The manganese content is often kept low to minimize the possibility of cracking during water quenching.

There are six groups of tool steels: water-hardening, cold-work, shock-resistant, high-speed, hot-work, and special purpose. The choice of group to select depends on cost, working temperature, required surface hardness, strength, shock resistance, and toughness requirements.[2] The more severe the service condition (higher temperature, abrasiveness, corrosiveness, loading), the higher the alloy content and consequent amount of carbides required for the tool steel.

Tool steels are used for cutting, pressing, extruding, and coining of metals and other materials. Their use in tooling is essential; injection molds for example require tool steels for their resistance to abrasion- an important criterion for mold durability which enables hundreds of thousands of moldings operations over its lifetime.

W-group tool steel gets its name from its defining property of having to be water quenched. W-grade steel is essentially high carbon plain-carbon steel. This group of tool steel is the most commonly used tool steel because of its low cost compared to others. They work well for parts and applications where high temperatures are not encountered; above 150 C (300 F) it begins to soften to a noticeable degree. Its hardenability is low, so W-group tool steels must be subjected to a rapid quenching, requiring the use of water. These steels can attain high hardness (above 66 Rockwell C) and are rather brittle compared to other tool steels. W-steels are still sold, especially for springs, but are much less widely used than they were in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This is partly because W-steels warp and crack much more during quench than oil-quenched or air hardening steels.

The cold-work tool steels include the O series (oil-hardening), the A series (air-hardening), and the D series (high carbon-chromium). These are steels used to cut or form materials that are at low temperatures. This group possesses high hardenability and wear resistance, and average toughness and heat softening resistance. They are used in production of larger parts or parts that require minimal distortion during hardening. The use of oil quenching and air-hardening helps reduce distortion, avoiding the higher stresses caused by the quicker water quenching. More alloying elements are used in these steels, as compared to the water-hardening class. These alloys increase the steels' hardenability, and thus require a less severe quenching process and as a result are less likely to crack. They have high surface hardness and are often used to make knife blades. The machinability of the oil hardening grades is high but for the high carbon-chromium types is low.

This series includes an O1 type, an O2 type, an O6 type and an O7 type. All steels in this group are typically hardened at 800 C (1,500 F), oil quenched, then tempered below 200 C (400 F).[3][4][5][6][7]

Modern air-hardening steels are characterized by low distortion during heat treatment because of their high-chromium content. Their machinability is good and they have a balance of wear resistance and toughness (i.e. between the D and shock-resistant grades).[11]

The D series of the cold-work class of tool steels, which originally included types D2, D3, D6, and D7, contains between 10% and 13% chromium (which is unusually high). These steels retain their hardness up to a temperature of 425 C (800 F). Common applications for these tool steels include forging dies, die-casting die blocks, and drawing dies. Due to their high chromium content, certain D-type tool steels are often considered stainless or semi-stainless, however their corrosion resistance is very limited due to the precipitation of the majority of their chromium and carbon constituents as carbides.

Since 2002 Hudson Tool Steel Corporation has been supplying tool steels, high speed steels, carbon steels, and alloy steels to customers around the country. Our motto is "We make tool steel easy", and we strive every day to uphold that ideal. Our salespeople have years of experience in the tool steel business and can take care of your needs in a hurry. We stock all standard grades and sizes of tool steel and high speed steel as well as specialty grades. Our inventory is produced by the highest quality tool steel mills and we are continually adding more sizes to suit all of our customer's needs.

Call, fax, or email us and find out more about our company. We're sure your dealings with Hudson Tool Steel will leave you satisfied.

HUDSON TOOL STEEL CORPORATION STANDARD TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY. FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS, PLEASE CLICK HERE. ALL MATERIAL PROVIDED BY HUDSON TOOL STEEL CORPORATION IS FOR COMMERCIAL USE ONLY.

Tool steel is a type of carbon alloy steel. It is often used to make, modify or repair hand tools or machine dies. Metal Supermarkets offers a variety of shapes and grades of tool steel, cut to size, including: A2, D2 and O1.

Tool steel is notable for hardness, resistance to abrasion and deformation. The steel can retain a cutting edge at very high temperatures which is why it is often used in the shaping of other materials through cutting, pressing, coining or extruding. The resistance to abrasion lends to their use in the production of injection molds.

Tool steel H13 is a chromium molybdenum, vanadium hot work tool steel which is has high hardenability and excellent toughness. This material can withstand rapid cooling and it resists premature heat checking. H-13 has good machinability, weldability and good ductility.

Tool steel S7 is a shock resisting tool steel with excellent toughness, high strength and medium wear resistance. Due to its maximum shock resistance and high compression strength, it has good deformation resistance and retains good toughness during use.

With our four in-house, state-of-the-art Vertical Plate Saws and twelve Horizontal Saws, Diehl Tool Steel is able to process orders to exact customer specifications. We process both large and small cutting requirements. Saw cut items ship in 24 to 48 hours.

Here at Diehl, we pride ourselves on our ability to not only produce results with extreme precision, but to maintain this level of quality with an impressive allowance of sizes. In the table below, one can see both our minimum and maximum working capacities; all dimensions are measured in inches. Please contact us with any questions concerning our machining capacities and allowances.

If you need your steel parts or products quickly, Diehl Tool Steel is your trusted partner. Our distribution center in Cincinnati, Ohio, puts us in the center of the U.S. and allows us to ship to the majority of our customers within 24 to 48 hours. Expedited shipping options are also available.

With material composition certifications from our distributors and laser vision systems that measure the largest of materials with extreme precision, you can count on our steel products for the most accurate and smallest of tolerances available in the industry.

Our proprietary metals give you reliable, repeatable results every time. Get more stamps, better quality cuts and longer equipment run time, thereby increasing your productivity and decreasing your equipment downtime.

Our state-of-the-art material scanners and best-in-class quality processes are designed to check your material composition and specifications prior to shipping, ensuring you have the highest quality. This way, you can deliver that same unparalleled high quality to YOUR customers.

Great blog, Ron! I have a question about the anti-oxidation flux you reference for heat treating. Do you suppose that borax powder could be used for this purpose? I am making a boning knife out of O1 and want to achieve a hardness of about Rc61 or so. I have a jewelry burnout oven that is big enough to accommodate the blade.

Thank you so much for this posting. I am new to metal working and have been trying to make a hand stamp out of O1 steel for use on stainless steel jewelry tags. This helped me out a lot but I am wondering if you have any experience making hand stamps?

I have a knife made of En-31. The spine is very soft, and I would like to make it harder. I have a small blow torch that I can use. Do you know specs/colours for hardening En-31. I would like to harden it to HRC 51

Hi Ron, Great explanation, I have read a number of pages on heat treating as well as some books on knife making and have learned quite a lot but your post cleared up a couple of questions that I did not even realise that I had. Really appreciate this page.

My metallurgical knowledge may have some depth but it is very narrow. I know a lot about steel for edged tools. So I am unqualified to answer your question. Liability exposure will make anyone other than a professional metallurgical engineer shy from this kind of question. And for those same liability issues, you need to hire a pro. Good luck!

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