Abstract
Warm forging brings together advantages of hot (e.g. forging load reduction) and cold (e.g. no scale) metal forming operations. However, due to decreasing the process temperature, the risk of fracture occurrence increases. In this paper the risk of cracking initiation during warm forging of surgical forceps made of martensitic stainless steel is estimated. The investigations assume the analysis of the fracture initiation point in the component during forging and attempt to define the critical value of process parameters by means of laboratory tests and FEM numerical simulation.