Intro
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Die-temperature management during the run: thermal profiling in plain English
Read a die-surface thermal trace, hold the H13 operating window, and use a contact pyrometer and an IR gun without lying to yourself about what either one is measuring.
A die comes off shift change reading 480°C on the operator's IR gun. The build log says the die was tempered at 540°C during heat treat. The operator says the surface is fine because the gun reads under the temper temperature. The die has been running this way for three shifts. On the fourth shift the operator's hardness checker registers 41 HRC on the die face. The build spec called for 48-50 HRC. The die has lost case in three days of production, and nobody can point to the moment it happened.
The temperature trace was telling the story the whole time. The operator was reading the trace wrong.