Hard Chrome Surface Treatment
Hard chrome plating is a lubricious surface treatment creating excellent material flow and radii formability. DMI chrome plated dies have a surface hardness greater than 1000HV (71HRC), four to five times that of cast iron, and have a high resistance to wear and scoring
Benefits of Hard Chrome:
- Lubricity
- Extends tool life
- Reduce oil in press
- Reduces scrap cost
- Galling preventative
- Excellent release agent
- Reduce wear of tooling
- Increases throughput
- Reduce need for repeated polishing
- Decreases downtime
- Press ready finish
- Building up material for grind stock
Great for these Applications:
- OD Plating
- Injection/Rubber/Thermo-set molds
- Forging dies
- One-Off Applications
- Compression Molds
- Stamping dies
- Punches
- Cavities
- Binders
- Inserts
Hard Chrome Surface Treatment Advantages
Manufacturing and Operational Advantages:
- Chrome plating allows for the use of more cost competitive grades of flake grey cast iron
- Less expensive material costs with savings of up to 30% possible
- Flake grey cast iron is more easily machined, gives longer life to cutter heads and allows for more efficient use of die cutting machinery
- DMI chrome plated dies have a surface hardness greater than 1000HV (71 HRc) four to five times that of cast iron, and have a high resistance to wear and scoring
- Low friction - high lubricity
- Resistance to pimples and imperfections
- Reduced press downtime of up to 90% has been reported
- Reduced rework & scrap
Hard Chrome Surface Treatment Savings:
- Reduced die maintenance
- Reduced press “try out” time
- Higher percentage of 1st time quality panels
- Reduced instances for polishing or cleaning the die
- Better utilization of press capacity
- Reduced customer quality complaints
- Reduced premium freight and improves on-time delivery
- Reduced need for purchased lubricants resulting in reduced forming variables
- Reduction in lubricants = cleaner die, press and work area.
Advantages of Chrome Plating in addition to Nitride:
- DMI’s chrome plating process allows for excellent chrome adherence to the substrate of stamping dies
- Chrome plating in addition to Nitride allows for a higher Rockwell (HRc) reading of the surface
- Nitride is 55 – 58 HRc
- DMI Chrome is 71 HRc
- Chrome plating provides a 2nd layer of hardness with increased lubricity
- DMI currently has OEM customers whose standards now “require” Chrome Plating over Nitride
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