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DIRECTION AND MOVMENT OF D2 TOOL STEEL

This is a brief explanation about tool steel movement during hardening with D2 material being used as an example.

Assuming this an block of steel that has been cut off a longer piece, the "rolling direction" is in line with the black arrow. This is the direction that the steel was rolled in at the steel mill to make it into a flat plate. At 90' to this direction, the orange arrow indicates what is called the "transverse direction". The purple arrow indicates the direction called the "short transverse". If this block were to have pieces cut from it as indicates by the blue, red and green portions, the three resulting plates, lying flat on a table would not have the rolling, transverse and short transverse directions in the same orientation.

direction. If you look at the technical data from steel manufacturers, it shows how a piece of D2 moves during heat treating, it shows how it shrinks in two dimensions and grows in the other. If parts were made from these off cuts, the tree directions would be randomly oriented and would result in some pieces showing growth in a critical direction and others showing shrinkage. However, this only applies to the hardening stage. During tempering, shrinkage only occurs which could result in further shrinkage in two directions and a reduction or even cancellation of growth in another. If the rolling direction cannot be identified or maintained in a toll, the result is often a loss of control over material movement during heat treating. The best way to avoid this is to buy a plate for your requirements and to make all the parts the same way.