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As more and more high strength and advanced high strength steels are being utilized into automotive body panels, structural beams and rails to reduce weight to meet the Café (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) requirements, wear of stamping dies is becoming a major issue. Many types of coatings/surface treatments such as: thermal spray, ion nitriding, chrome plating, PVD, CVD, and TD coatings are being used in stamping plants. Identifying a cost-effective coating and the die material based on the types of the advanced high strength steels is difficult since there is little data available. None the less on the real die. This paper will discuss the evaluation of the coatings and die materials on a B-pillar draw die. The coatings and die materials were chosen based on laboratory design of experiment tests and the typical die materials used in stamping plants.

As high strength steels are introduced into automotive stamping applications to satisfy CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) and fuel economy requirements, wear of stamping dies is becoming a major issue. Many types of coatings/surface treatments such as: thermal spray, ion nitriding, chrome plating, PVD, CVD, and TD coatings are being used. Choosing the best coating is difficult since there is little data available to compare all types of coatings under the same operating conditions. A laboratory pin on flat test procedure was developed and utilized to compare the wear resistance of various coatings. SEM pictures of wear scars of coated pins indicated that coatings can effectively protect the substrate material from wear. Without coating the substrate material wears away rapidly. The test results showed that hard chrome performed well when run against various sheet materials, but its wear resistance was significantly lower than high temperature coatings.