Optimization of Controlled Cooling of Forgings from Finishing Temperature with the Use of Light and Electron Microscopy

Customer requirements represent the driving force in the market, dictating the directions of development, production and processing of forged parts. Meeting these requirements is of paramount importance to forge shops as a precondition for their continuing operation and competitiveness. Consequently, optimization of manufacturing operations and their rapid response to market requirements are necessary for the forge shops to survive. However, any production stoppage for optimization results in extra costs. Forge shops thus strive to carry out optimization in as few steps as possible and within the shortest possible timeframe. A viable solution emerges in the form of material-technological modelling which involves laboratory-based optimization taking place away from the forge shop without any constraints on the production operations. This paper deals with selection of a material for a forged part to be controlled-cooled from the finishing temperature to substitute a C45-steel part treated by normalizing. One criterion was that the entire forged part should contain ferritic-pearlitic microstructure.