APH Tooling Info

APH - Amada High Speed Steel

There are four key properties in tool steel metallurgy that should be considered.

Impact strength
Toughness
Wear resistance
Hardness

Traditional high speed steel allows optimising on two of these four properties and compromises on the remaining two. APH has a special manufacturing process, which allows us to optimise on all four key properties.

Traditionally with high speed steel, the raw tool steel is melted down into ingots, re-sized and hardened. Powder steel however, is atomized and then compacted together to the required dimensions. The pictures on the left show microscopic views of High Speed Steel & APH tool steel.

The white blocks are the compound Carbide which is a major factor in giving the tool steel the properties required. It can be clearly seen that APH tool steel has a much more uniform grain structure, thus enhancing such properties as dimensional stability, improved grind-ability and toughness.