Uddeholms AB is a multinational producer of high

alloyed An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which in most cases at least one is a metallic element, although it is also sometimes used for mixtures of elements; herein only metallic alloys are described. Metallic alloys often have properties ...

tool steel Tool steel is any of various carbon steels and alloy steels that are particularly well-suited to be made into tools and tooling, including cutting tools, dies, hand tools, knives, and others. Their suitability comes from their distinctive ...

with production in Hagfors, Sweden. Since 1991, the company is part of the Austrian

Böhler-Uddeholm Böhler-Uddeholm is an Austrian company specialized in producing tool steel and special forgings. It was formed in 1991 as a result of a merger between the Austrian parastatal Böhler and Uddeholms AB of Sweden. The company has production sites ...

group which in turn is part of the

voestalpine AG Voestalpine AG – stylized as voestalpine – is an Austrian steel-based technology and capital goods group based in Linz, Austria. The company is active in steel, automotive, railway systems, profilform and tool steel industries. As of 201 ...

group since 2007. Uddeholms AB has 800 Swedish and 3,000 total employees.

History

The company was founded in 1668 by Bengt Gustaf Geijer. The company was then privately held until 1870 when it became a public company named Uddeholms AB. During the second half of the 19th century, the company introduced electricity and railways to their production. The Uddeholm railway was the first private railway in Sweden and also one of the first to be electrified in 1920. The company was introduced to the United States in the 1830s and in the 1920s a modern international sales organization was created. In 1945, Associated Swedish Steel was created together with four other major Swedish steel producers to sell steel to the new markets in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

and

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

. In 1976, Uddeholm bought the whole of ASSAB and since 1 April 2011, it is fully integrated in Uddeholms AB with the exception of ASSAB Pacific Pte Ltd.

Production

Uddeholms AB's production plant is Hagfors Järnverk (

Hagfors Hagfors is a locality and the seat of Hagfors Municipality, Värmland County, Sweden with 10,125 inhabitants in 2010. Its history is traced to 1873, when it was decided to build two blast furnaces at the location. The town of Hagfors used to pl ...

Iron mill) in Hagfors, Sweden. There are three production routes. In every route except granulation, the materials are heat treated and machined. Image:Melt Down uddeholm.jpg, Melting of steel scrap in an

Electric arc furnace An electric arc furnace (EAF) is a Industrial furnace, furnace that heats material by means of an electric arc. Industrial arc furnaces range in size from small units of approximately one-tonne capacity (used in foundry, foundries for producin ...

Image:Ladle refining uddeholm.jpg, Purification of

in ladle Image:Uphill Casting uddeholm.jpg, Uphill casting Image:ESR1 uddeholm.jpg, ESR-remelting Image:Ingot Casting.jpg, Ingot casting

Conventional

This type of production has three phases. First, steel

scrap Scrap consists of recyclable materials, usually metals, left over from product manufacturing and consumption, such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials. Unlike waste, scrap can have monetary value, especially recover ...

is melted in an

Electric Arc Furnace An electric arc furnace (EAF) is a Industrial furnace, furnace that heats material by means of an electric arc. Industrial arc furnaces range in size from small units of approximately one-tonne capacity (used in foundry, foundries for producin ...

. After melting, the steel is purified in a secondary treatment to remove

sulfur Sulfur ( American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphur ( Commonwealth spelling) is a chemical element; it has symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms ...

slag The general term slag may be a by-product or co-product of smelting (pyrometallurgical) ores and recycled metals depending on the type of material being produced. Slag is mainly a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide. Broadly, it can be c ...

and other unwanted materials. In the third step, the steel is poured into an ingot. Different methods such as Up-hill casting and the use of protective noble gases can further improve quality.

Electro-slag remelting (ESR)

In the electro-slag remelting (ESR) process, steel scrap is first melted using the conventional process but is then remelted in a water-cooled form. With this process, a more even microstructure can be achieved which gives completely different properties than a material produced with the conventional method. There are different variants of the electro-slag remelting process where the remelting is done in

vacuum A vacuum (: vacuums or vacua) is space devoid of matter. The word is derived from the Latin adjective (neuter ) meaning "vacant" or "void". An approximation to such vacuum is a region with a gaseous pressure much less than atmospheric pressur ...

or a protective atmosphere.

Powder metallurgy

In the powder metallurgical process, a fine powder is created by spraying a stream of liquid steel with

nitrogen Nitrogen is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a Nonmetal (chemistry), nonmetal and the lightest member of pnictogen, group 15 of the periodic table, often called the Pnictogen, pnictogens. ...

under high pressure. The average diameter of the powder is 50-100 μm. The powder is filled into capsules directly in order to avoid contamination. With

hot isostatic pressing Hot isostatic pressing (HIP) is a manufacturing process, used to reduce the porosity of metals and increase the density of many ceramic materials. This improves the material's mechanical properties and workability. The HIP process subjects a c ...

(HIP), the powder is consolidated to 100% density. The advantage with powder metallurgical tool steels is to have a high degree of alloys without getting segregations in the material. This makes it possible to combine high material hardness with wear resistance.

Metal granulation – Granshot

The Granshot process was developed at Uddeholm. In the Granshot process, hot liquid molten metal is poured at a flat surface, dispersing it so that small droplets are created. These metal droplets are immediately cooled in water, creating granules which are dewatered. The process is applicable to iron, steel, stainless steel, ferro alloys and base metals. These granules have ideal metallurgical and logistical properties as to facilitate the use of granules into blast furnaces, electric arc furnaces, AODs, foundries etc. For example, the granules can be used in casting of tools in order to achieve tools with even metallurgical properties. In 2007, the independent and privately owned Swedish engineering company UHT - Uvån Hagfors Teknologi AB, was formed and also took over all intellectual property rights including the trademark Granshot. Uddeholm has continued to produce metal granulates, so called Granshots, using their Granshot unit in Hagfors, Sweden.

Products

Uddeholms AB manufacture and refine high

alloy An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which in most cases at least one is a metal, metallic element, although it is also sometimes used for mixtures of elements; herein only metallic alloys are described. Metallic alloys often have prop ...

ed tool steels in long and flat dimensions. Tool steels are mainly used in tools such as molds,

knives A knife (: knives; from Old Norse 'knife, dirk') is a tool or weapon with a cutting edge or blade, usually attached to a handle or hilt. One of the earliest tools used by humanity, knives appeared at least 2.5 million years ago, as evidenced ...

, tools that are used for

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer ...

of different products. Tool steels are used in all manufacturing industries such as automotive,

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

consumer goods A final good or consumer good is a final product ready for sale that is used by the consumer to satisfy current wants or needs, unlike an intermediate good, which is used to produce other goods. A microwave oven or a bicycle is a final good. W ...

and

packaging Packaging is the science, art and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use. Packaging also refers to the process of designing, evaluating, and producing packages. Packaging can be described as a coo ...

. Due to their special

metallurgical Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the ...

properties, e.g.combinations of

hardness In materials science, hardness (antonym: softness) is a measure of the resistance to plastic deformation, such as an indentation (over an area) or a scratch (linear), induced mechanically either by Pressing (metalworking), pressing or abrasion ...

wear resistance Wear is the damaging, gradual removal or deformation of material at solid surfaces. Causes of wear can be mechanical (e.g., erosion) or chemical (e.g., corrosion). The study of wear and related processes is referred to as tribology. Wear in ...

toughness In materials science and metallurgy, toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing.corrosion resistance Corrosion is a natural process that converts a refined metal into a more chemically stable oxide. It is the gradual deterioration of materials (usually a metal) by chemical or electrochemical reaction with their environment. Corrosion engine ...

, they can also be used for mechanical applications instead of engineering steels.

Cold Work Steels

Cold Work Steels are

s used for

tool A tool is an Physical object, object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many Tool use by animals, animals use simple tools, only human bei ...

s where the work material is cold. The steel is exposed to mechanical forces by the work material. Common problems are

wear Wear is the damaging, gradual removal or deformation of material at solid surfaces. Causes of wear can be mechanical (e.g., erosion) or chemical (e.g., corrosion). The study of wear and related processes is referred to as tribology. Wear in ...

, chipping,

plastic deformation In engineering, deformation (the change in size or shape of an object) may be ''elastic'' or ''plastic''. If the deformation is negligible, the object is said to be ''rigid''. Main concepts Occurrence of deformation in engineering application ...

and cracking which can lead to tool failure. Application areas are stamping,

deep drawing Deep drawing is a sheet metal forming process in which a sheet metal blank is radially drawn into a forming die by the mechanical action of a punch. It is thus a shape transformation process with material retention. The process is considered "dee ...

cold extrusion Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile by pushing material through a die of the desired cross-section. Its two main advantages over other manufacturing processes are its ability to create very complex ...

fine blanking Blanking and piercing are shearing (metalworking), shearing processes in which a Punch (metalworking), punch and die (manufacturing), die are used to produce parts from coil or sheet stock. Blanking produces the outside features of the component ...

cold forging Forging is a manufacturing process involving the shaping of metal using localized compressive forces. The blows are delivered with a hammer (often a power hammer) or a die. Forging is often classified according to the temperature at which ...

, form pressing and

rolling Rolling is a Motion (physics)#Types of motion, type of motion that combines rotation (commonly, of an Axial symmetry, axially symmetric object) and Translation (geometry), translation of that object with respect to a surface (either one or the ot ...

Hot Work Steels

Hot Work Steels are tool steels that are used for tools where the material is hot. Due to the high temperatures when working with molten metals such as

aluminium Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

and

brass Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, in proportions which can be varied to achieve different colours and mechanical, electrical, acoustic and chemical properties, but copper typically has the larger proportion, generally copper and zinc. I ...

, the requirements on the tools are very high. High heat resistance and ductility as well as wear resistance are important. Resistance to thermal cyclic stress is also good. Application areas are

casting Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting, which is ejected or ...

extrusion Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross section (geometry), cross-sectional profile by pushing material through a Die (manufacturing), die of the desired cross-section. Its two main advantages over other manufacturing pro ...

and

forging Forging is a manufacturing process involving the shaping of metal using localized compression (physics), compressive forces. The blows are delivered with a hammer (often a power hammer) or a die (manufacturing), die. Forging is often classif ...

Plastic Mold Steel

Plastic Mold Steels are tool steels used for production of plastic parts. The most important characteristics are durability and hardness, toughness, wear resistance, polishability, corrosion resistance, and thermal heat conductivity. Important customer groups are in the automotive,

industry,

and other industries that use plastic components. Application areas are

blow molding Blow molding (or moulding) is a manufacturing process for forming hollow plastic parts. It is also used for forming glass bottles or other hollow shapes. In general, there are three main types of blow molding: extrusion blow molding, injection ...

, form pressing, form blowing,

and holder materials.

Mechanical components/Mechanical engineering

Mechanical components such as engine parts (shafts cog wheels), machine parts, wear parts can be made of tool steel. The combinations of hardness, toughness,

corrosion Corrosion is a natural process that converts a refined metal into a more chemically stable oxide. It is the gradual deterioration of materials (usually a metal) by chemical or electrochemical reaction with their environment. Corrosion engine ...

resistance and other properties of tool steels, makes it possible to replace more traditional

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

steels.

Reference to international tool steel standards

Other

Sponsoring and local engagements

Between 2002 and 2008, Uddeolms AB was name sponsor for the

WRC WRC may refer to: Broadcasting stations * WRC-TV, a television station (virtual channel 4, digital channel 34) licensed to Washington, D.C., United States * Several radio stations in the Washington, D.C. area: ** WWRC, a radio station (570 AM) l ...

Swedish Rally The Rally Sweden (), formerly the KAK-Rally, the International Swedish Rally, and later the Uddeholm Swedish Rally, is an automobile rally competition held in February in Värmland, Sweden and relocated to Umeå in 2022. First held in 1950, as a ...

Sources

{{Authority control Manufacturing companies of Sweden Companies established in 1668 1668 establishments in Sweden Industrial history of Sweden Companies based in Värmland County Hagfors 17th-century establishments in Närke and Värmland County