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.
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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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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).