Development and Research of the Billet Forging Technology in the Newly Designed Step-Wedge Dies

One of the main ways to improve product quality, obtained by forging, is implementing shear and alternating deformation (severe plastic deformation) during deformation process, which allows manufacturing products with required mechanical properties and less forging reduction. In practice, it is possible to implement shear and alternating deformation by improving the design of the ingots or the billets, forging tools, heating modes and forging method. In this paper newly designed forging die, which allows implementation of shear and alternating deformation without sufficient changes of the billet sizes, is proposed. By the research results of the new forging technology influence in the proposed tools on the microstructure evolution, it was found, that the use of the newly designed step-wedge dies has more potential for manufacturing high-quality forgings with required level of mechanical properties.