As steels get stronger, hot stamping with localized softening-now very localized via lasers-is a game changer in automotive applications. Developed in the early-1970s and first used to provide wear resistance for knives, lawn-mower blades and shovels, press hardening - or hot stamping - was conceived as a means to replace cold stamping and secondary batch hardening with a forming/quenching process within a single tool. Today, hot stamping finds itself in the midst of a renaissance, owing to automotive light-weighting and safety trends.
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