Methods to improve mechanical properties of EN31 (High Carbon Steel) and D3 (High-Carbon, High-Chromium Steel) materials

EN31 and D3 materials are widely used in manufacturing industries or manufacturing processes. EN-31 steel was selected for machinability studies, because it is widely used in automotive industry for the production of axle, roller bearings, ball bearings, shear blades, spindle, forming and molding dies, etc. Because of high hardness, D3 Hardened steels are most widely used in multifarious industrial applications like tool design and mold design. EN31 is very well known in the field of manufacture. Outstanding quality of these tool steel grades coupled with their excellent performance makes these tool steel grades ideally suited for variety of applications like ball and roller bearings, spinning tools, beading rolls, punches and dies.. D3 belongs to Cold-work tool steels family which includes D2, D3, D4, D5 and D7 steels are high-carbon, high-chromium steels. Apart from D3 steel all D family steels have 1% Mo and are air hardened. Type D3 steel is oil-quenched, though small sections can be gas quenched after austenitization using vacuum. As a result, tools made of D3 steel tend to be brittle during hardening. D2 steel is the most commonly used steel among the group D steels. The D3 steels contain 1.5 to 2.35% of carbon and 12% of chromium