Wear resistance of direct-energy–deposited AISI M2 tool steel with and without post-heat treatment

In this study, the wear resistance of AISI M2 high-speed tool steel produced using direct energy deposition (DED) was investigated in detail. Wear behavior was studied under different wear loads and sliding speeds using ball-on-disk tribology tests with two different counterpart balls (bearing steel and ZrO₂). The wear test results revealed that there was almost no wear damage in the M2 alloy when a bearing steel counterpart ball was used. When a ZrO₂ ball was used as the counterpart, a measurable, but small, amount of wear weight loss of M2 was observed. It was found that M2 alloy fabricated by DED has excellent wear resistance, greater than fully carburized conventional steel and high wear resistance steel produced by DED. The formation of a lubricious tribo-oxide film on the worn DED M2 surface is likely the reason for its excellent wear performance. The total wear weight losses of only ~1.5 mg was observed for the M2 produced by the DED, both in the as-DEDed and heat treated states against ZrO₂ balls, under the wear loading conditions of 50 N wear load, 100 mm/s sliding speed and total sliding distance of 500 m. In comparison to the other wear-resistance materials, the wear weight loss of the M2 produced by the DED was more than 6 times smaller than the fully carburized structural steel and 1.5–4 times smaller than high wear resistance steel produced by the DED. Thus, DED of the M2 alloy offers a great potential for the production of wear-resistance hard-facing of tribological components.