The research activities focus on the development of novel tailored steels applicable as filler materials for hardfacing and repair welding of high-performance tool steels, which can be processed as wire or powder material by e.g. laser cladding.

In order to extend the tool lifetime, deposition and repair welding provides a cost-efficient and resource-conserving method for the surface protection of tools (e.g. against wear and/or corrosion), to rebuilt worn or broken components or to correct production failures. To overcome the high susceptibility to cracking of most high-performance tool steels and the limited portfolio of adequate filler materials, tailored Fe-based alloys are designed and synthesized for different application-orientated specifications of tools and molds at Leibniz IFW Dresden. One example is the Fe85Cr4Mo8V2C1 (wt%) alloy, which is successfully applied as coating material on several high-performance tool steels (e.g. C-rich X155CrMo12-1) using a pulsed Nd:YAG laser system. Especially for repair purpose, manual laser cladding with thin filler wires (diameters down to 0.2 mm) is a preferred method for relevant industry areas. As a consequence, the alloy was fabricated as wire material at Leibniz IFW Dresden by an optimized workflow of suitable processtechnologies on an industrial scale.

Due to the high cooling rates during the welding process and appropriate laser parameters, a fine microstructure composed of martensite, austenite as well as MC- and M₂C-type carbides was formed. The combination of phases along with their special morphology and distribution result in crack-free coatings with an enhanced hardness of up to 900 HV 0.1 and a high abrasive wear resistance. Therefore, the final coatings with improved properties outperform conventionally available and applied cladding alloys.