Hardness, adequate toughness and wear resistance are the properties generally required for
tool steels. The increased demand for high-quality tool steels at the present time has resulted in the need to produce steels with larger amounts of carbon, as well as other alloying elements. However, increasing the level of the alloying elements tends to promote segregation effects and the coarsening of carbides, and hence a considerable reduction in the toughness results. One way to suppress segregation and coarsening is to use a powder metallurgy (P/M) process