Dievar tool steel for Easy Riders

Bikers love motorcycles with immaculately smooth and shiny visible parts, while motorcycle manufacturers love durable tool steel. Uddeholm satisfies them both with its unique Dievar tool steel.

For many motorcycle enthusiasts, part of this delight stems from pride in the aesthetics of their machine: the perfect smoothness and shine of the engine castings, clutch cover, and swing arm all reflected in the eyes of their admirers. Yet even among true motorcycle nerds, very few have even an idea of just how tricky the process of manufacturing these gleaming components is: molten aluminum, heated to temperatures of several hundred degrees Celsius, is pressure sprayed into the relevant casting mold which quickly closes and then reopens, again and again, until the formative tool has reached the end of its extremely high-stress life cycle.

Immaculately smooth and shiny visible parts made of unique Dievar tool steel.

Expensive tools

“Tools are an expensive business for manufacturers,” explains Richard Oliver, Product Manager for Hot Works at Uddeholms AB. “The high costs force motorcycle manufacturers to do their calculations very carefully—after which they conspicuously frequently turn to Dievar steel from Uddeholm to construct their tools. Why? “Firstly, because the life cycle of a tool made from Dievar is almost a third longer than one made with H11 or H13 steel,” says Richard, “and secondly, because tools made with Dievar produce truly premium parts.”

Winner of the heat marathon

Just as steady drips of water carve out stone, so pressure and heat slowly but steadily destroy any casting mold. They cause surface tears which leave their ugly mark in the work piece itself—an absolute taboo for leading, and accordingly quality conscious, manufacturers of famous brands, whether in Japan, Europe, or the USA. And especially when the parts are visible.
Itself the product of an immensely elaborate manufacturing process, Dievar resists thermal exhaustion for far longer than all other materials.

Often copied, never matched

As Uddeholm is rather pleased to report, chemically-identical Dievar copies never achieve the quality of the original. This doesn’t surprise Richard Oliver: “After all, we’ve been in this business for 350 years, adapting every time to reflect advances in manufacturing technologies.”