Extending Die Life: Maintenance & Welding Strategies

NADCA has released a new publication based it's popular 2012 webinar series on die care and maintenance. The series, presented by Professor David Schwam from Case Western Reserve University, focused methods of die care and maintenance from the perspective of best approaches to preserve and extend die life.

Understanding the failure mechanisms is important not only in the design and fabrication but also in the maintenance and care of the dies. The main die failure mechanisms are gross cracking, thermal fatigue or heat checking, erosion, soldering and cavitation. These are all mechanisms that can damage the die and cause it to malfunction or make defective parts. Following a brief review of failure mechanisms, this book describes methods to make dies last longer; like preheating temperatures and temperature control during the die casting process, spraying and internal cooling, and creating a good balance between these two. The last section of this book will cover die care and maintenance of the dies such as inspection, handling, cleaning, polishing, welding, and storage.