A Novel Tailored Hot Stamping Tooling Concept to Achieve Multiple Locally Tailored Zones

摘要

In this paper, the details of a new purposely designed multi-block tailored hot stamping tool will be presented. The design of this tooling permits the precise control of temperature/cooling at 12 individual regions within the punch and die of tooling to produce straight channel-shaped parts (U-shape). This tooling was fabricated and tested, and this study presents the first results which assess the capability of this novel tooling concept. Five experiments of different combinations of heating and cooling blocks were conducted using high strength hot stamping steel 22MnB5 as the blank material. The corresponding blank temperature history, the temperature of each tool block, as well as hardness of flange, bottom and side wall of the U-shape part, were obtained and analyzed. The performance of the tool was assessed, and a few problems were identified for future improvement.