Hot work
H13, 1.2367, H11, H10, 1.2714 — die casting, extrusion and forging dies.
Tool Steel Manufacturer for Distributors and Stockholders
Supporting distributors, stockholders and wholesalers with factory-direct supply.
Melted, forged, heat-treated and finished on site, with traceability by heat number. Round bars Ø16–600 mm; flats and plates 20–500 mm thick and up to 1,200 mm wide.
19Years as a source mill
25,000 tAnnual production capacity
10,000 tFinished stock in warehouse
100+Countries shipped directly
Eight Production Stages Inside One Works
- Melt shop
- Electroslag shop
- Three presses
- Heat treatment
- Four finishing areas
- Inspection centre
Eight stages stand between an order and a shipment, and all eight are ours. Melting runs in one shop on two medium-frequency induction furnaces, three shifts. Electroslag remelting runs in a second shop on ten furnaces. EFS grain refining is carried on the forging lines and the annealing furnaces under a regime issued per grade, described on the fine grain tool steel page. Certification is the quality department signing the release.
One Number Runs the Length of It
Forging runs on three lines and two shifts, heat treatment on eight car-bottom annealing furnaces plus the quench-and-temper line, finishing in four areas. The bar that leaves the warehouse carries the number the melt shop poured, and every record made between those two points is filed against it.
Grades From One Tool Steel Manufacturer
Order in the designation your customer uses. Equivalents are treated as one grade, with one specification and one certificate.
Cold work
D2, DC53, D3, D6, O1 — blanking, forming and shear tooling.
Plastic mould
1.2316 and 1.2085 — corrosion resistant, pre-hardened on delivery.
Stainless tool
420, also called 1.2083 and 3Cr17 — mirror finish mould work.
High speed
M2, also called 1.3343 — cutting tools and cold forming punches.
Cross-references to AISI, DIN and W-Nr, JIS, GB, ASSAB and BÖHLER are confirmed in writing on the first reply, so you can forward the mapping to the tool room that asked for it. The two volume grades carry their own pages: H13 tool steel and D2 tool steel.
| Grade | Also called | Family |
|---|---|---|
| H13 | 1.2344, SKD61 | Hot work |
| 1.2367 | — | Hot work |
| H11 | 1.2343 | Hot work |
| H10 | 1.2365 | Hot work |
| 1.2714 | — | Hot work, forging dies |
| D2 | 1.2379, SKD11 | Cold work |
| DC53 | — | Cold work |
| D3 | 1.2080 | Cold work |
| D6 | 1.2436 | Cold work |
| O1 | 1.2510 | Cold work, oil hardening |
| 1.2316 | — | Plastic mould, corrosion resistant |
| 1.2085 | — | Plastic mould, pre-hardened |
| 420 | 1.2083, 3Cr17 | Plastic mould, mirror finish |
| M2 | 1.3343 | High speed |
- AISI
- DIN / W-Nr
- JIS
- GB
- ASSAB
- BÖHLER
One grade, one certificate
Equivalent designations are not separate products here. Order in whichever one your customer wrote.
Three Forging Lines and Section Range
Three presses cover the whole supply range, from a 16 mm round to a 1,200 mm wide plate.
2,500 t fast forging
The heavy line, and the reason a 600 mm round and a 1,200 mm wide plate are both possible here.
Round 300–600 mm
Flat 200–500 thick × 400–1,200 wide
1,600 t fast forging
The middle band, where most distributor and stockholder sizes are made.
Round 150–350 mm
Flat 20–250 thick × 200–800 wide
Radial precision forging
Where the dimensional accuracy and the surface of the small sections come from.
Round 16–150 mm
The Ratio Does Not Move
The minimum forging ratio is 4:1, issued per grade and per section by our metallurgical engineers. Heavier sections hold that ratio because the ingot changes, not the ratio: a bigger section starts from a bigger ingot, and the 3 to 12 tonne ingot range exists for exactly that.
The regime itself is on the EFS tool steel technology page
Minimum 4:1, per grade and per section
Issued before the order is scheduled, not judged at the press. Ingots 3–12 t give the heavy sections somewhere to start from.
Buyers We Supply
Three buying patterns, one supply route, and no route past you to the tool room.
Distributors
Buy across the range and sell to tool rooms, so what matters is that equivalents are confirmed in writing and that a certificate survives being forwarded to somebody who will test the steel again.
Stockholders
Buy the five stock grades on a replenishment rhythm and need the stock position and the lead time to be the same next quarter as this one.
Wholesalers and project buyers
Come with project orders on the other nine grades and the heavy sections, where the question is whether the press and the ingot exist for that section.
All three buy from a tool steel manufacturer that sells only into the distribution layer, so your customer list stays your own. More on the company and the people behind it is on the about our works page
- Largest single customer
- 8% of a year — one buyer's cycle never sets the queue everyone else waits in
- Buying here 5 years or more
- About 40% — of the customers on the books
Sawing, Grinding and Machining Services
Cut, ground, milled or turned before it ships, to a tolerance written on the order.
| Operation | Machines | Held to |
|---|---|---|
| Sawing to length | 8 CNC band saws, to 600 mm dia. / 500 mm thick | ± 2 mm |
| Surface grinding | 4 precision grinders to 2,000 × 800 mm | ± 0.05 mm |
| Gantry grinding | 2 gantry grinders to 4,000 × 1,300 mm | ± 0.05 mm |
| Gantry milling | 4 CNC gantry mills, 4,000 × 1,500 mm travel | 0.1 mm / m |
| Turning and machining | 3 CNC lathes to Ø 600 × 3,000 mm, 3 machining centres | Quoted per drawing |
The line stops at hardening
Steel ships annealed or pre-hardened. Hardening and tempering is run by whoever makes the tool, so tell us at the enquiry which stock allowance that work needs left on.
Ultrasonic Testing on Every Bar
The unit of testing is the bar. So is the unit of reporting.
Zero-cost way to check any mill
Ask for the ultrasonic test report for a specific bar, quoting its heat number and bar identification. Check that the report identifies the material tested, the test method and the acceptance criteria.
Every bar is ultrasonically tested before it is released, and that matters when the certificate reaches somebody downstream who owns a defect and wants to know about the one piece in the machine.
Four digital ultrasonic flaw detection sets sit in the inspection centre, and between them they cover the whole supply range: round bar from 16 to 600 mm and flat sections from 20 to 500 mm thick. Every section this works is able to forge is a section it is able to test, which is what makes 100% a description of practice rather than an intention.
One Sample, or Every Bar
Sixteen bars off one heat, and what each approach actually reports.
Batch sampling — one bar tested, a conclusion written for sixteen
100% ultrasonic testing to SEP 1921 — sixteen readings, filed one by one
A per-bar reading answers a specific question about a specific piece. A batch conclusion is a sentence that says testing was done.
The Class Is Yours to Name
Testing and acceptance follow SEP 1921. Your order names the class, Class D/d or Class E/e, and that is the class the bar is tested against and the class printed on the certificate against the heat number. Order the same grade twice for two different customers at two different classes and you get two sets of results, each reported to the class you wrote. Bars judged unacceptable against the class you ordered are held back at inspection.
Who Signs a Reading
Inspectors are trained and examined to ISO 9712 Level II and recertified every three years, and a signature on a test result belongs to one of them.
Ten of them work in a 34-person quality department that reports to the general manager, keeps output and delivery targets out of its own performance measures, and holds both the stop and the release decision on every heat.
- Coverage
- 100%, one bar at a time — round 16–600 mm, flat 20–500 mm thick
- Standard and class
- SEP 1921 Class D/d or E/e — whichever your order names
- Sets in the centre
- 4 digital flaw detectors — covering the full forged range
- Reading held for
- 10 years — filed against the heat number, per bar
Three years after delivery, a query naming a heat number pulls the reading for that bar, not a summary of the lot it travelled in. For a distributor this is a document question before it is a metallurgy question: you are the one who forwards the certificate, and you are the one a tool room comes back to when a die cracks in its first month.
The Eight Inspection Steps
All eight complete and recorded before the quality department signs a release, and no other function can sign one.
Eight Checks, In Order
- 01 · VisualSurface condition on every bar as it comes off finishing
- 02 · DimensionsSection and length against the tolerance written on the order
- 03 · CompositionDirect-reading spectrometers, the analysis that reaches the certificate
- 04 · HardnessRockwell and Brinell, against the delivery window for the grade
- 05 · Ultrasonic100% to SEP 1921 Class D/d or E/e, one bar at a time
- 06 · Magnetic particleSurface and near-surface defects
- 07 · MetallographyStructure and grain size, rated for the heat
- 08 · Carbide ratingCarbide distribution rated for the heat, not a fixed figure
Machined parts add a coordinate measuring machine check on dimensions and form. The 34 people in the quality department are split across those steps: ten certified ultrasonic inspectors, eight in the laboratory and metallography room, eight on dimensions and visual inspection, eight on systems and certification.
Certifications and Compliance Documents
Documents that can be sent on request, not logos arranged on a page.
ISO 9001
The quality system is certified to ISO 9001, audited internally once a year and by third-party surveillance on the certificate cycle.
TÜV carbon footprint
Carbon footprint certification covering the reporting side, issued against the mill that made the steel.
EU CBAM data
Declaration figures prepared here, so your European buyer is not sending the file back asking who can supply the numbers.
Each certificate answers a different gate in your customer's purchasing process, and each one is a document that arrives as a file rather than a claim. The standards the steel itself is written against sit alongside them.
- ISO 9001
- EN 10204 3.1
- SEP 1921 Class D/d
- SEP 1921 Class E/e
- ISO 9712 Level II
- EU CBAM
- TÜV carbon footprint
Check it in one question
Ask for a heat number and the shop that poured it.
Tool Steel Manufacturer or Trading Company
Where the steel is actually made is the most useful thing to establish about a new supplier, because everything else follows from it.
A tool steel manufacturer with its own melt shop and a trading company with a good office give the same answers to most questions, and different answers to these five.
Five Questions, Two Answers
| Question | This works | A trading supplier |
|---|---|---|
| Who melts the steel | Our own induction and electroslag furnaces | Whichever mill sold the bar on |
| Whose analysis is on the certificate | Measured on our spectrometers | Passed through from the mill |
| Who remakes a rejected heat | Our schedule, our melt | Replacement timing depends on the agreed supply arrangement |
| Who holds the records in three years | Quality department, ten-year retention | Record retention and retrieval depend on the supplier and producing mill |
| Who signs the release | Our quality department | Release responsibility depends on the agreed inspection and certification arrangements |
Works Visits and Document Requests
Ask for all four before committing anything. A third-party inspection company you nominate gets the same access.
Visit arrangements are on the about our works page
A sample 3.1 MTC
On any grade, before you quote. Read the composition line, the hardness reading against its window, and the ultrasonic class.
01Your document list, answered
Item by item within 24 working hours, rather than a general company pack sent back for you to search.
02A booked works visit
Five working days' notice, covering melting and electroslag, forging, heat treatment, finishing, the inspection centre and the warehouse.
03A video audit
The same route, stopping at any station you name, when travel is not practical.
04
Send Your Replenishment List or a Drawing
Grade, section and quantity per size, and you get feasibility, stock or production, and a lead time inside 24 hours on a working day.
- GRADES REMELTED: 14 of 14 grades in-house
- ULTRASONIC TEST: 100% UT to SEP 1921 Class D/d or E/e
- CERTIFICATE: MTC EN 10204 3.1 provided with every batch
Or write to wonderful@fcstoolsteel.com · +86-18972782802 on WhatsApp. Mon–Fri 09:00–18:00 (GMT+8).