| Résumé | Tooling constitutes a significant fraction of production costs in many manufacturing processes, reaching as high as 50% in certain cases. Laser cladding offers the opportunity of substantially reducing such tooling costs through repair, reconfiguring, and/or surface enhancement. It can also potentially improve repaired tooling quality and productivity. In this work, the effects of laser cladding conditions and heat treatment of H13 tool steel for colour matching repair have been investigated, using hardness distributions over the processed regions as the major indicator. It has been shown that no softening zone exists between the laser clad and the base metal substrate. By optimal combination of laser cladding processing and heat treatment, the hardness difference between the clad and the base metal can be controlled to less than Hv 25 (HRc 1.5) while maintaining the original hardness of the pre-hardened base H13 tool steel (Hv 590/HRc 55). |
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