Electroslag remelting · all fourteen grades
Electroslag remelting decides what the inside of a bar looks like before it is ever forged. We run ten electroslag furnaces and put all fourteen grades through them — and that is a claim you can settle with arithmetic instead of trust.
Remelting capacity and total output are the same number. That is what makes every a fact.
100% ultrasonic testing to SEP 1921 Class D/d or E/e, one bar at a time · EN 10204 3.1 MTC with every batch · measured grain size and carbide distribution ratings for your heat
Range — 14 grades, 5 families
Fourteen grades leave this works, and all fourteen are electroslag remelted. The ingot size changes with the grade and the section ordered. The route does not.
Bar ends from four heats, colour-marked for dispatch.
There is no premium remelted line here and a standard one underneath it. Every grade goes through the electroslag shop.
| 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 |
Equivalent designations are one grade here, quoted from one specification and certified once, with cross-references to AISI, DIN and W-Nr, JIS, GB, ASSAB and BÖHLER confirmed in writing on the first reply. Order in the designation your customer uses.
Shop — 1 melting bay, 10 ESR furnaces
Two 15-tonne medium-frequency induction furnaces run on three shifts, three heats a day each, and pour electrode ingots of 3 to 12 tonnes. Composition is set in those furnaces, on our own spectrometers, which is what makes the analysis on the certificate ours to report rather than a figure inherited from whoever sold us an ingot.
The electrode goes next to the electroslag shop. The electrode tip is melted through a layer of molten slag, and the metal passes through that slag drop by drop before it reaches the pool below. A new ingot builds upward inside a water-cooled mould, and it solidifies as it builds rather than all at once.
Two things happen in that one pass, and both matter downstream: the slag takes sulphur and non-metallic inclusions out of every drop, and the ingot is rebuilt with a solidification pattern that a conventionally cast ingot cannot have.
The shop reached ten furnaces in 2016, and that is the year every grade started going through it rather than a selected part of the range. Forty-eight people work in melting and electroslag refining. The regime for each grade, including which ingot size a given section is started from, is issued by our metallurgical and process engineers before the order reaches the shop floor.
One pass
What an ingot does while it freezes, it does once. No operation after it puts back what solidification took away.
Load-bearing — the two-minute check
Every mill selling remelted steel says the grades are remelted. That sentence is worth exactly as much as the furnace capacity behind it, so here is ours in three lines you can check on a calculator.
The two numbers meet, and that is the whole point of putting them on a public page.
For the word every to be physically true, remelting capacity has to be at least equal to total output, because steel cannot be shipped through a furnace that does not exist. Ours is equal to it, with the utilisation figure already deducted rather than quoted at theoretical full load, since any engineer reading a capacity claim will ask whether it assumes the furnaces never stop.
It costs nothing, needs no visit, and is the same calculation we have run on ourselves.
The 14 hours is the basis of a capacity figure, not a delivery promise on your ingot, and nothing here means a furnace is standing idle on the day your order arrives, because production to order is scheduled work.
The arithmetic proves one thing only, which is that all fourteen grades can be remelted here, and are.
| Basis | Figure |
|---|---|
| Electroslag furnaces | 10 |
| Ingot size range | 3 – 12 t |
| One 5 t ingot, one furnace | ≈ 14 h |
| One furnace, per day | ≈ 6.7 t |
| Utilisation allowed for | ~80% |
| One furnace, per year | ≈ 2,400 t |
| Ten furnaces, per year | ≈ 24,000 t |
| Annual output | 24,000 t |
Melt rate is logged for each run, against the heat.
Sizing — 3 to 12 t, chosen before melting
The ingot size is chosen from the 3 to 12 tonne range by the section you have ordered, and that choice is made before melting, not after.
Heavy sections go from the 2,500-tonne fast forging press. The 1,600-tonne press covers the middle of the range. Small round sections, 16 to 150 mm, are forged on the radial precision forging machine, which is what gives that end of the range its dimensional accuracy and surface rather than leaving it to be turned out of something larger.
Reduction is where the ingot size earns its place. When the finished section gets heavier, what changes is the ingot we start from, not the reduction ratio, and the 3 to 12 tonne range exists so that a minimum 4:1 forging ratio is held on a 600 mm bar as well as on a 60 mm one. Buying an ingot on the open market means taking the size that is available; melting and remelting in-house means picking it.
The reduction regimes themselves, and what they do to structure, are set out on our EFS page.
| Line | Round bar | Flat bar and plate |
|---|---|---|
| 2,500 t fast forging press | Ø 300 – 600 mm | 200 – 500 × 400 – 1200 mm |
| 1,600 t fast forging press | Ø 150 – 350 mm | 20 – 250 × 200 – 800 mm |
| Radial precision forging machine | Ø 16 – 150 mm | — |
Load-bearing — five effects, five document lines
Five things change inside the steel, and each one is visible on a line of the document that travels with the batch. Reading them in that order is the fastest way to judge remelted material on paper.
A disc cut from the remelted bar, macro-etched: no central cavity to find.
The ingot freezes from the bottom upward as it builds inside the water-cooled mould, so the shrinkage cavity and central porosity that form when a large conventionally cast ingot solidifies inward from all sides do not develop.
100% ultrasonic testing to SEP 1921 Class D/d or E/e, one bar at a time, with the individual result recorded against the heat number. Internal soundness is the one property a buyer genuinely cannot inspect on arrival, and it is the reason the ultrasonic line is checked bar by bar rather than sampled.
Every drop of metal passes through molten slag on its way down, and the slag takes sulphur and non-metallic inclusions with it.
The measured composition for your heat on the EN 10204 3.1 MTC, produced on our own spectrometers, with the sulphur line as the direct reading. Non-metallic inclusion rating can be added to the order as an extra test item when your customer specifies one.
Because the ingot is rebuilt drop by drop rather than poured and left to separate, composition stays consistent from bottom to top and from surface to centre.
The analysis on the certificate describes the bar you received rather than an average across an ingot that varies through its own height.
In the high-carbon high-chromium cold work grades, the eutectic carbide network formed during solidification decides how a blanking edge behaves, and a fast, progressive freeze forms it finer and better spread than a slow one.
Carbide distribution rating, the eighth of our eight inspection steps, measured in our metallography room on your heat.
The structure is cleaner and more even, which is what the subsequent forging reduction and annealing regime then work on.
The grain size rating, the seventh step, measured on the same sample. Both structural ratings are reported as measurements taken on your heat rather than as a fixed level printed once and applied to everything, and magnetic particle testing covers surface and near-surface indications alongside them.
Reply T+24 h
Tell us the grade, the section and the quantity per size, and you get feasibility, stock or production, and the document set back within 24 hours on a working day.
Load-bearing — six things to ask for
Everything above is checkable, and the heat number is what makes it checkable. Here is what to ask for, in the order a purchasing desk normally needs it.
An EN 10204 3.1 MTC ships with every batch, signed by the quality department's authorised inspection representative. That department reports to the general manager and sits outside production, and output and delivery targets are not part of how it is assessed, which is what allows it to hold material that production would rather ship.
Ask before you order, on any of the fourteen grades
The grade in your designation, the heat number, measured composition from our own spectrometers, hardness, the ultrasonic result against the acceptance class your order specified, and the measured grain size and carbide distribution ratings for that heat.
The rating is the one measured on your heat — not a level printed once
Because ultrasonic testing is done one bar at a time and each result is recorded against the heat number, an individual reading can be retrieved for a specific bar rather than a batch average.
Records and certificate copies retained for 10 years
Ultrasonic operators are trained and examined to ISO 9712 Level II and recertified every three years, and an unqualified operator cannot sign a test result here.
ISO 9712 Level II · recertified every 3 years
ISO 9001, EU CBAM compliance and TÜV carbon footprint certification are held and current, and where your quality department sends a document checklist we answer it item by item rather than returning a general information pack.
Checklist answered line by line, T+24 h on a working day
The bar-by-bar ultrasonic test, spectrometer sampling and metallographic preparation can all be seen being performed in the works, on the material they are testing.
Booked about 5 working days ahead
The ultrasonic class is the one your order specifies, Class D/d or Class E/e under SEP 1921, so the test and the report are both run against the class your customer works to.
Stock — 5 grades held finished
The five grades held finished are the same electroslag remelted material as anything produced to order, certified the same way.
Stock coverage, dispatch windows and processing lead times are set out on our homepage.
One route
There is no unremelted line here for an order to slip onto when the shop is busy. Ten furnaces, one shop, the whole range.
Routes — 3 furnaces, 3 questions
Three refining routes turn up in tool steel specifications, and they answer different questions.
The electrode is consumed from the tip; the ingot below it is a second casting.
| Route | Acts on | Where it is the right answer |
|---|---|---|
| Ladle treatment | Liquid steel before casting: cleanliness and composition | Where composition and cleanliness are the requirement and solidification structure is not the deciding property |
| Electroslag remelting | Cleanliness and solidification structure, in one pass, after the first solidification | Heavy tool and die sections that have to behave the same at the centre as at the surface |
| Vacuum arc remelting | Dissolved gases and inclusion levels, under vacuum | Aerospace structural steels, titanium alloys, superalloys |
Ladle treatment improves cleanliness and adjusts composition, and it is effective at what it does, but the steel is still poured into a mould and left to solidify inward as one mass.
Electroslag remelting works after that first solidification. A solid electrode is remelted through molten slag and a second ingot is built progressively, so the process acts on cleanliness and on solidification structure in the same pass. That combination is what tool and die steel needs, because a die block is a heavy section, and it is why our whole range goes through it.
Vacuum arc remelting remelts under vacuum instead of slag. It is the right answer where dissolved gases govern the result and where inclusion levels have to go lower still.
We operate ESR. We do not operate vacuum arc furnaces.
For tool steel sections the electroslag route is the one that fits the requirement. Where a specification genuinely calls for VAR material, it calls for a different mill, and we will say so.
By family — 4 failure modes
What remelting is doing for you depends on which family you are buying, and it is worth knowing which effect your customer is actually paying for.
Fails through thermal fatigue
A crack network develops on a die face cycled thousands of times, and it starts wherever there is an inclusion or a segregated band to start from. Cleanliness and uniformity are the effects that matter here. H13 is covered in detail on its own page.
Decided by its carbides
Around 12 percent chromium and high carbon produce a eutectic carbide network on solidification, and its coarseness and directionality govern edge retention and how much the tool moves in hardening. Remelting is the first of the two steps that break that network up, forging reduction being the second. Our D2 page follows this through to the tempering routes.
Judged on a finished surface
Every inclusion near the surface becomes a defect a moulder can see in the part, so the cleanliness gained in the slag is the property being bought.
Holds an edge or does not
M2 is carried for cutting tool and punch applications, and remelting refines the carbide distribution that governs how well it holds that edge.
After — forging ratio and annealing
Remelting sets the starting structure. EFS, our grain refining process, works on it afterwards through controlled forging reduction and grade-specific annealing regimes.
What those two ratings mean, and how the regimes are written and held, are covered on our EFS page.
Six areas open
The bar-by-bar ultrasonic test can be watched being performed, on the bar it is testing.
Visit — booked 5 working days ahead
Six areas open, and the operations behind your certificate watched as they are performed.
Bar-by-bar ultrasonic testing, spectrometer sampling, metallographic rating and certificate retrieval can all be watched being done. Arrangements are set out on our company page.
Who we sell to — the distribution layer
We are a source mill selling to distributors, stockholders, wholesalers and large-scale procurement buyers, and the distribution layer is who this works is built to serve.
End users approaching us directly are referred to a distributor in their market.
You are not competing with your own supplier for the tool rooms you sell to.
A first order can be run as a trial to verify the material against your own requirements before it becomes regular replenishment, and buyers who are changing mills usually do exactly that. Once the material is accepted, the same grades come back on a replenishment rhythm, from the same specification and the same written process regime.
Cut, banded and packed for onward sale under your own label.
Non-conformance — no concession shipment
Material that fails inspection is held back and not shipped. There is no concession shipment here.
The heat is re-inspected. The shortfall is re-produced from our own melt, to the same specification — possible only because the melt is ours.
A short delivery is a scheduling problem you can manage. A batch that reaches your customer out of specification is a claim you cannot. How a disagreement over a test result is settled is set out on our homepage.
Seven lines — one complete reply
Seven lines, and the first reply is a complete one, inside 24 hours on a working day.
In whatever designation your customer wrote. Equivalents are mapped and the mapping comes back in writing so you can forward it.
So each line is checked against stock or production separately rather than as a total tonnage.
Annealed, or pre-hardened where the grade offers it.
Class D/d or Class E/e under SEP 1921. If your customer has not stated one, say so and the technical desk will ask what the tool is before anything is cut.
Black forged, peeled, ground, or milled on six faces.
Beyond our eight steps, where your customer specifies them: non-metallic inclusion rating, impact testing, or a hardening test sample taken from the same heat.
Including your own brand specification.
Feasibility line by line, stock or production, the grade mapping confirmed, and the documents that will ship with the batch.
Ask for a sample EN 10204 3.1 MTC on any of the fourteen grades, and read the ultrasonic, grain size and carbide lines on it. That single document answers more about a mill than any brochure will.
Reply T+24 h
You get feasibility line by line, stock or production, the grade mapping in writing, and the document set that will ship with the batch — within 24 hours on a working day.
Or write to wonderful@fcstoolsteel.com · +86-18972782802 on WhatsApp. Mon–Fri 09:00–18:00 (GMT+8).