Thixoforged damper brackets made of the steel grades HS6-5-3 and 100Cr6

Thixoforging of metals is a recently developed forming technology, which combines the advantages of casting and forging. Different components made of aluminium and magnesium are already industrially produced. Apart from this, the use of steels in Thixoforging processes is still restricted to research and development. The reason for this are much higher process temperatures, which result in higher demands regarding the temperature control and the tool set-up. Recently it became more and more obvious that the Thixoforging process is not a substitute for the highly automated forging and casting processes, but rather a production route to produce components with specific quality and geometry requirements. Due to cost reasons, therefore, the application areas of Thixoforging will become the production of complex and integrated components, which are made of high strength and super high strength steels, and which can be hardly produced by conventional processes. In this work the material selection regarding the thixoforgeability and the resulting material behaviour in a first prototype-component with a complex geometry is presented. The investigations show the potential of producing gradient components with adjusted properties.