As a stamping factory specializing in high-end products, I need a die steel engineer on my team—that’s the impression I got after speaking with the engineer.
Today, the tooling manager and a tooling designer from a listed company in Shenzhen visited us. They were facing issues with their cold heading dies and, having exhausted all other options, brought the product to our company for a face-to-face discussion with me.
Their cold-headed products are made from two materials: aluminum and stainless steel.
For the aluminum parts, they cold-forge a 3mm-high, 10mm-long boss onto 5mm-thick sheet metal. Currently, using 8407 tool steel causes corner collapse and deformation, while using 8566 results in cracking. The dies also tend to get clogged with aluminum powder, leading to a short die life—it’s been a real headache.
The stainless steel products are very small and require bending or thinning during forming. Currently, using 8566 steel results in corner collapse and chipping, forcing him to spend all day repairing the dies. He’s also tried LD die steel, but it’s unstable and has unpredictable service life. Tungsten steel is too brittle and chips easily, and ASP60 also suffers from corner chipping. He’s tried every tool steel he could think of, but nothing has worked.
Their company handles direct orders from major international clients like Apple, Microsoft, and NVIDIA—high-value, high-volume contracts. But because the punches keep chipping, they can’t produce the parts, so they’re afraid to take on many of these orders.
After talking with him, I have two observations:
1) Engineers are completely baffled by counterfeit mold steel. Nothing seems to work—one grade is unsuitable, another is unreliable. The actual product rarely matches the specifications, and the performance claims are vastly different from the results. They’re forced to constantly try new grades, settling on whichever one happens to work. This isn’t about selecting mold steel; it’s like playing the lottery, hoping to hit the jackpot.
2) It’s not that users are unwilling to spend money or unwilling to buy expensive mold steel; rather, after trying various options and finding that mold lifespans remain equally short, they are forced to use cheaper mold steel.
In reality, their products aren’t large, the punch material usage is minimal, and machining costs are extremely high. The time lost from constantly replacing punches is a significant cost. Moreover, product requirements are very high, and the performance demands on the punches are extremely strict. Therefore, when they buy mold steel, they don’t care about the price at all. What they care about is performance—ensuring the mold can produce in volume, that the products meet specifications, that they’re delivered on time, and that they can secure more orders.
For customers who demand quality and performance but aren’t concerned about price, supplying them with subpar die steel is doing them a disservice—it prevents them from delivering on time and leaves them open to criticism from their bosses. Yet, unable to find high-performance die steel or experienced suppliers to solve their problems, they’re left with no choice but to keep experimenting and buying different options, grasping at straws in desperation.
Honestly, if you’re a stamping factory producing high-end products, you need a die steel engineer. Otherwise, your trial-and-error costs will be far too high.
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Wu Dejian’s tool steel, the chief of staff of the user, bought everything he had used.