A side-by-side comparison of high-speed steel and tungsten carbide for industrial machine knives — covering hardness, toughness, cost, edge retention and the substrates each material was actually designed to cut.
A runnable cross-reference table for cold-work tool steel, high-speed steel, martensitic stainless and carbide grades. Find the equivalent of AISI D2, M2, M4, 440C, 9Cr18MoV, YG6X, YG8 and 30+ other grades across ASTM/AISI, JIS, DIN/EN/W.-Nr., GB, BS, AFNOR, UNI, SS and UNE.
Cemented tungsten carbide (WC-Co) is a powder-metallurgy composite of tungsten carbide grains in a cobalt binder. The standard material for granulator, shear and high-abrasion industrial blades.
YG6X and YG8 are the two most-specified Chinese GB standard tungsten carbide grades for industrial knives. The 2 % cobalt difference looks small but it changes the wear-toughness trade, the impact resistance, and the substrate fit. Here is the engineering comparison.