Driveshafts require BÖHLER steels with high fatigue strength, torsional rigidity, and toughness. Key quality features include ultra-clean materials, controlled heat treatment, full traceability, and rigorous testing for reliable automotive and racing performance.
Driveshafts in automotive and high-performance racing applications are key powertrain components, transmitting torque under high rotational speeds, dynamic loading, and varying thermal conditions. Material requirements are therefore highly demanding, focusing on high fatigue strength, torsional rigidity, impact toughness, and resistance to vibration and wear. In racing environments, additional demands such as weight reduction, high-temperature stability, and consistent performance under extreme load cycles are critical for efficiency and reliability.
BÖHLER high-performance steels and alloys are specifically engineered to meet these requirements. Advanced alloyed steels, including quenched and tempered, case-hardening, and microalloyed grades, provide an optimized balance of strength, toughness, and fatigue resistance. Produced using advanced melting and refining technologies, BÖHLER materials ensure superior cleanliness, low inclusion content, and homogeneous microstructures, significantly enhancing durability under cyclic stress. Key quality features include precise control of chemical composition, certified traceability, and tightly controlled heat treatment processes to achieve defined mechanical and torsional properties. Additional process steps such as surface treatment or shot peening further improve fatigue life. Comprehensive testing, including torsional fatigue, mechanical verification, and non-destructive inspection, ensures consistent quality. BÖHLER materials enable reliable, lightweight, and high-performance driveshaft solutions for automotive and racing applications.
BÖHLER K600 corresponds to the material 1.2767 (45NiCrMo16). With its high nickel content, this material offers a very good combination of through hardenability and toughness. This results in a high resistance to impact and shock loads. BÖHLER K600 is used for a wide range of tools where high toughness is required. The material is used for forming and bending tools, cold shear blades for thick materials and for reinforcement rings. Due to its good polishability, BÖHLER K600 is also used for embossing tools, plastic molds and mold inserts for injection molding.
Read MoreBÖHLER V132 is a premium aircraft-quality, low-alloy Ni-Cr-Mo steel in the form of bars, forgings and forging stock requiring high tensile and toughness values, particular in large cross sections in the hardened and tempered condition. These products have been used typically for parts requiring a through-hardening capability up to 3.5 inches (89 mm) in nominal thickness at time of heat treatment but usage is not limited to such applications. E.g. highly stressed components and parts for the aircraft industry, Tracks, helicopter shafts, bolts and screws.
Read MoreBÖHLER V180 VMR is a high-quality, low-alloy Ni-Cr-Mo-V steel with a high silicon and vanadium content, available in bars and forgings for components with a nominal cross-sectional thickness of up to 3.5 inches (89 mm) that require the highest strength and toughness values, especially for large cross-sections in the quenched and tempered condition. This steel is typically used for parts that require a through-hardening steel with a minimum hardness of 53 HRC and can be used to produce finished parts that must meet the most stringent testing standards. Due to the higher Si and V content of BÖHLER V180 VMR, this high-strength steel offers improved mechanical and fatigue properties compared to the standard 300M grade and is used for mechanically highly stressed parts with high fatigue loads, such as torsion bars, gears, and transmission shafts, primarily in racing and automotive engineering, but also in mechanical engineering. The dual vacuum melting process, using vacuum induction melting (VIM) and subsequent vacuum arc remelting (VAR), ensures a high degree of purity and homogeneity and also enhances the fatigue properties of the manufactured parts.
Read MoreBÖHLER V358 in the British Standard Aerospace Series is a 3% Cr-Mo-V nitriding steel offering a tensile strength of 1,320-1,470 MPa, combined with excellent hardenability for high core strength and develops a hard wear resistant case after surface treatment. The alloy is produced by vacuum arc remelting. (VAR) Typical applications are gear shafts and crankshafts with maximum diameter of 70mm for the aircraft industry and automtovie components.
Read MoreBÖHLER W360 ISOBLOC is a material produced by the electroslag remelting process (ESR), which has been specially adapted for use at high tool hardnesses in the range of 51-57 HRC. Although the steel can be classified as a 5% chromium steel, the increased carbon and molybdenum content coupled with state-of-the-art manufacturing technology ensures that BÖHLER W360 ISOBLOC still shows a very good toughness and an exceptionally good thermal resistance, even at high hardness levels. These properties make the steel the perfect choice for smaller components in the die casting sector (e.g., mold inserts, cores, core pins, ejector pins, etc.). The material also is frequently the preferred choice for closed-die and open-die forging tools due to its high wear resistance. Because of this excellent wear resistance and the high toughness, BÖHLER W360 ISOBLOC is also frequently used for cold work applications and as a molding material for plastic injection molds. The Steel also is available as powder material for metal-3D-printing under the brand name BÖHLER W360 AMPO.
Read MoreBÖHLER W460 VMR is a double vacuum arc remelted (VAR) material that has been specially adapted for use in the motorsport sector. The steel purity achieved by this special manufacturing technology, combined with the high strength, ensures that a very high fatigue strength can be guaranteed. The high purity also results in very good polishability, which makes the steel a good choice as a tool material for minting coins.
Read MoreBÖHLER W720 VMR is not a classic hot work tool steel, but an ultra-high strength maraging steel. Compared to quenched and tempered steels, the material generates its high strength not through a hardened and tempered martensitic structure with a high carbon content and secondary hardening carbides, but through the precipitation of intermetallic phases from a tough nickel martensitic matrix. BÖHLER W720 VMR corresponds to material number 1.6358 (X2NiCoMoTi18-9-5) and has proven to be ideally suited for many tool steel applications in cold and hot work (e.g., for extrusion stems) up to 450 °C.
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