Lubricant free forming with tailored tribological conditions

Abstract

Changed ecological and economic situations motivate research into environmentally friendly and efficient manufacturing processes. Forming without lubricant has the potential to meet both requirements by avoiding the usage of environmentally harmful lubricants and shortening the process chain by omitting lubricant application and component cleaning. Within the scope of the project, an increase in friction and adhesive wear were identified as major challenges, resulting in failure of components due to cracking. Therefore, this project focused on the investigation of measures to meet these challenges. Amorphous carbon coatings, the reduction of roughness and the application of discrete microtextures were considered as potential measures. Hydrogen-containing amorphous carbon coating systems (a-C:H) fabricated by reactive physical vapor deposition (PVD), plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and PVD/PECVD hybrid techniques, as well as a PVD-generated tetrahedral hydrogen-free amorphous carbon coating (ta-C) were investigated with respect to their properties and tribological performance Three specific profile requirements –a dopant free carbon network, smooth and defect-free surfaces and a high coating adhesion to substrate –are identified as requirements, in order to prolonger the service life of the coated tools. Moreover, to enable the steering of the material flow ultrafast laser based micro texturing for locally tailored tribological conditions were investigated. Thereby two wavelength dependent ablation regimes which differ in ablation mechanism and freedom of form were identified. Using these approaches the friction coefficient could either be reduced by up to 20 % or selectively increased. To improve the efficiency of the process, several beam shaping approaches were evaluated to provide a homogeneous beam profile for uniform modification. By applying ta-C and a-C:H coatings in forming tests, the findings of the laboratory tests were validated and the feasibility of lubricant free deep drawing was proven. In order to benefit from the forming-process-specific advantages, high quantities and therefore high durability of the measures are required. An application-oriented wear test rig has been designed to investigate their durability. By this, it was proven that 3 000 components can be produced from DC04 without wear with both a-C:H and ta-C coatings, and thus increasing tool life by a factor of 15 compared to unmodified tools. Even in the case of wear-critical AA5182, 3 000 parts were produced without wear using ta-C. Within the scope of the project, a fundamental understanding of lubricant free deep drawing processes and measures was created and proof of feasibility in form of a high number of components was achieved.