Press hardening heats steel blanks and forms them in cooled dies, creating ultra‑strong martensitic parts. Using alloyed steels and cooled tooling, the process enables lightweight, crash‑resistant automotive components like pillars, bumpers, and door rings.
Press hardening, also known as hot forming, is a thermo‑mechanical process used to manufacture ultra‑high‑strength steel components with complex geometries. Steel blanks or cold formed shapes—typically made of manganese–boron alloys such as 22MnB5—are heated to around 900–950°C, transforming the microstructure into austenite. The hot blank is transferred into a water‑cooled die set, where forming and quenching occur in a single step(direct process). The indirect process uses a cold formed preform which is adequately heated. Rapid cooling inside the closed tooling converts the austenite into martensite, achieving strengths above 1500 MPa and keeps the shape to close tolerances. Typical tooling is made of a wide range of Hot Work and Cold Work Tool Steels or even HSS, depending on the actual load conditions and process details. Tooling is designed with integrated cooling channels, high‑temperature inserts, and durable coatings to withstand thermal cycling and maintain dimensional precision. Process control includes furnace heating, transfer time, forming speed, and die temperature. Press‑hardened components are widely used in automotive safety structures such as A‑ and B‑pillars, bumper beams, door rings, and roof rails, enabling lightweight designs with superior crash performance and high energy absorption.
BÖHLER W302 ISOBLOC is a 5% chromium steel and corresponds to material number 1.2344 (X40CrMoV5-1). Produced via the electroslag remelting process (ESR), this tool steel has very high hot toughness as well as very high hot hardness and a very good resistance against heat-checkings. The combination of these properties makes it a top performer in closed- and open-die forging as well as in high- and low-pressure die casting. In addition, this material has very good polishability and is therefore also often used as a molding material for plastic injection molds.
Read MoreBÖHLER W302 ISODISC is a 5% chromium steel and corresponds to material number 1.2344 (X40CrMoV5-1). This common tool steel has good hot toughness as well as a high hot hardness and a high resistance against heat-checkings. The combination of these properties makes it a standard choice in extrusion, forging and low-pressure die casting. This material is also available as W302 ISOBLOC which is a remelted grade with improved cleanliness, homogeneity and toughness.
Read MoreBÖHLER W403 VMR is a vacuum remelted material which was developed as a problem solver for tools for where a standard solution is no longer sufficient. The steel can be assigned to the 5% chromium steels and has a very high purity due to the special manufacturing technology. In addition, the increased molybdenum content leads to improved thermal resistance as well as wear resistance, which makes BÖHLER W403 VMR an all-rounder that is often used for highly stressed dies in the die casting sector. In addition, Böhler W403 VMR has outstanding polishability. For this reason, the steel is also popular as a molding material for plastic injection molds.
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