Laser heat treatment of automobile mold technology introduction

The heat treatment of the surface of the automobile panel mold is a key process and important technology in the manufacture of automobile molds. It is directly related to the working quality and service life of the mold, and also greatly restricts the improvement of mold manufacturing costs and cycle. At present, the surface heat treatment of domestic automobile molds is still mainly flame quenching, induction quenching or overall quenching. There are problems such as large deformation of the mold surface after quenching, poor surface quality, and unstable process quality, which increase the difficulty of processing workpieces after quenching. A large number of CNC machining and fitter grinding, thereby greatly increasing the processing cost and reducing the quality of the mold.

Laser heat treatment technology has the advantages of accurate and uniform local quenching, small deformation of materials after quenching, and small surface quality changes. It has been widely promoted in material heat treatment, but due to the complex structure of automobile molds, more curved surfaces, and more quenching tracks Change, the current domestic laser quenching process of manual sampling and recording followed by simple programming (ie teaching mode) is not suitable for the great efficiency requirements of automobile mold production, which restricts the promotion of laser technology in automobile panel mold manufacturing In application, there is a certain distance from the expected use effect in terms of the completeness of the equipment, the matching of the software or the reasonable aspects of the quenching process.

Summary of Laser Quenching Process Route

The company purchased a certain type of large-scale cross-flow laser complete set of equipment manufactured by a famous domestic laser equipment manufacturer. The mechanical part of the equipment is in the form of five-axis linkage, and the CNC system is Siemens SINUMERIC840D. The company completes the entire process route plan through the combination of three aspects:

(1) First, accumulate the laser quenching process parameters of different materials, different surface quality requirements, and different structural conditions of molds, and gradually enrich the knowledge base of laser quenching processes, as a basis for rapid transfer of heat treatment process parameters.

(2) Carry out the development of offline programming software, realize the automatic preparation of CNC programs, gradually eliminate the use of on-site teaching mode, increase the programmed processing ratio of the quenching process, and increase the effective heat treatment man-hours of the laser equipment.

(3) Integrate the process knowledge base into the process software, prepare a large number of quenching equipment NC programs and process parameter settings offline and simply, and use a large number of NC programs to control quenching parameters and processes on site, reducing human intervention, thereby Greatly improve the effective utilization of laser equipment and the stable quality of quenching.

According to the characteristics of automobile mold processing and the current status of purchased laser equipment, a complete set of laser quenching process solutions suitable for automobile mold manufacturing has been developed. After practical verification, it has not only greatly improved the automation and efficiency of the laser quenching process, but also effectively simplified The automobile mold production process is eliminated, that is, the CNC reprocessing or the large-scale grinding work of the fitter due to the deformation of the mold after flame quenching is eliminated, and the expected mold surface quality effect is achieved.