I am looking to improve the wear life of some forging dies used at my manufacturing plant. The dies are made of H13 tool steel. I have very little experience with case hardening via chemical absorption and I just wanted to know if anyone had any tips on what I should take into consideration when choosing a surface hardening process. Would one process yield significantly better results than another? Etc...
Any tips would help because when I say I have very little experience in surface hardening I mean I attended one lecture a year ago at an ASM meeting and I remember the basics that I learned in college. So I know enough to be dangerous...
Thanks,

Nitriding is an option, but the other two usually aren't used for tool steel dies.  Other options are chromium electroplating, hardfacing alloys, and cermet and ceramic coating/inserts (WC, TiN).

Nitriding of H13 forging tools is very common.  Neither of the other processes are used, as CoryPad mentioned.  There is a ton of information available on the web regarding nitriding in general, and nitriding of forging tools in specific.  Here are some links:

http://www.ahtweb.com/content.php?id=31&t=Technical_Papers

http://www.forging.org/FIERF/pdf/walker.pdf

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=nitriding+H13+forging&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=pdf&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&;as_qdr=all&as_rights=&;as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images
 

If your parts are amenable to this process we got better results on tool steels D2, H11, H13, CrMoVan, etc with the TD (VC-NbC} process versus Nitrided parts, especially the H11.  
 
http://www.richterprecision.com/td-trd-coatings.html

 

Try cryogenic processing.  True cryogenic processing (not cold treating) should give you about double the life.