Many people think that 8566 die steel is a standard grade that can be purchased anywhere, but those who have used fourth-grade 8566 die steel and compared it to Yuhui’s 8566 chipping-resistant steel have deeply regretted their choice.
Mr. Li was using 4.0 hot-rolled sheet for forming. He had originally purchased a fourth-grade 8566 steel at 109 yuan per kilogram, but after producing 10,000 products, the mold inserts would start to chip—specifically, the corners would break off.
After he contacted me, he switched to our Yuhui 8566 anti-chipping steel. When he returned to repurchase 8566, he told me that the mold life had increased tenfold. The price of the mold steel was only slightly higher, yet the service life increased tenfold—a difference that left Mr. Li deeply regretting his earlier decision.
Yes, 8566 is a proprietary anti-chipping steel developed exclusively by Yuhui Mold Steel. It is not a national steel grade and does not have public status; it is our intellectual property. However, many people mistakenly believe that 8566 is a standard steel grade and that any steel labeled 8566 possesses these properties, resulting in significant losses.
8566 is a proprietary anti-chipping steel developed by Yuhui Mold Steel, primarily designed to address mold chipping issues. It has been tested in over a thousand cases across five stamping operating conditions, six major material types, and seven major industries. Its anti-chipping performance is four times that of SKH-9 high-speed steel and twice that of D2, with a hardness of 58–60 HRC. It primarily addresses cracking issues that high-hardness mold steels such as D2, DC53, and SKH-9 are unable to resolve. This is particularly true in demanding conditions such as stainless steel stamping, sharp-corner stamping, and narrow-flange stamping—including cases where the punch flange width is less than the sheet thickness, the punch hole diameter is smaller than the sheet thickness, or the stamping ratio is less than 1:1. Chipping issues that standard die steels cannot resolve are all successfully addressed by 8566 anti-chipping steel.
However, due to 8566’s high market visibility, strong sales, and customers specifically requesting it, competitors across the internet have resorted to “the four forms of plagiarism.” These include copying our product descriptions, advertising slogans, case studies, and even the 8566 mold steel designation itself. Not only do we face these four forms of plagiarism, but there are also “shadow 8566” products, and it has even become a reference standard for certain major steel mills—an unprecedented and bizarre phenomenon in the industry.
The reason 8566 delivers such outstanding performance isn’t just its proprietary alloy composition—the smelting process is proprietary as well. We’ve even specified the size of impurities, and the heat treatment process is unique to us. This is something others simply cannot replicate, resulting in fundamentally different performance characteristics—and consequently, different results for you when you use it. You’ll end up like Mr. Li: using 4.0-thick hot-rolled sheets for forming into blank parts, the “four-copy” 8566 at 109 yuan/kg will chip and crack after just 10,000 cycles, whereas Yuhui 8566 offers a 10-fold increase in service life—equivalent to producing 100,000 products in a single run.
The price difference between die steels is minimal, and wire-cutting processing fees are the same for both. However, with a 10-fold increase in die life, the lower-priced option actually ends up costing more in real-world use.
The key point is that it wastes your time and processing fees, and you can’t achieve the desired efficiency. Your losses aren’t limited to the cost of the steel itself—you’ll also incur labor costs, wire-cutting fees, and additional costs resulting from reduced efficiency. Many people who buy 8566 today do so blindly because they don’t understand the underlying reasons. As a result, they end up paying a high price without achieving the desired results—and their losses extend far beyond the cost of the steel itself.
When it comes to punch chipping, using 8566 die steel makes all the difference—it’s like night and day—but counterfeit 8566 does not possess this performance.
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Wu Dejian’s tool steel, the chief of staff of the user, bought everything he had used.