Intro
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Maintenance options: polish, repolish, weld repair, re-nitride, re-coat, scrap
Match a wear mode to a maintenance action. Know when polish buys real life and when it hides a crack, when TIG weld is the right call versus a coin flip versus never, what re-nitride and re-coat actually recover, and when scrap is the right answer.
A die at 65,000 hits comes off the press for inspection. The flash land has washed about 0.4 mm in three spots, the back corner of the impression has a 3 mm crack growing perpendicular to flow, and the lead-in radius has a thumbnail-sized chip. The maintenance shop has five options on the wall: polish, repolish, weld, re-nitride, re-coat, scrap. The wrong call on this die costs roughly the same as a new build by the time the second repair fails. The right call extends life by another 60,000 hits at a fraction of new-die effort.
Five options, five different conditions where each one is right. Get the match wrong and the maintenance budget pays for the lesson twice.