Recently, a message that "China already has five-axis linkage CNC machine tool technology" really made military fans excited. Speaking of the previous procurement history, the experts are a bitter tear: five-axis linkage and other high-end CNC machine tools have been prohibited from selling to Chinese military industrial enterprises because of their key role in aircraft, nuclear submarines and other military equipment; even if they are purchasing For civilian use, it is also necessary to promise to be supervised and tracked by foreign manufacturers for the rest of their lives.
"In recent years, with the continuous improvement of the technology of CNC machine tools and basic manufacturing equipment industry, China's high-end CNC technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, not only the five-axis linkage, but also many other key technologies have achieved breakthroughs." National major special project "High-end CNC machine tools and Wang Yong, a member of the special expert group of basic manufacturing equipment, said.
Currently in the stage of industrialization and marketing application
CNC machine tools are the "working machine" of the equipment manufacturing industry. The technical level and product quality of a country's machine tool industry is an important indicator to measure the development level of its equipment manufacturing industry. China's "Made in China" 2025 has listed high-end CNC machine tools as one of the top ten key areas of China's manufacturing development strategy.
Wang Yong believes that starting from the special project in 2009, it is aimed at four key areas of aerospace, power generation, automobile and shipbuilding. Now, several fields have achieved relevant results. In the field of automobile manufacturing, the large-scale fast and efficient CNC automatic stamping production line has won large-volume orders for the production lines of American auto local factories in the international bidding with world-class enterprises. At present, the domestic market share of automotive panel stamping lines exceeds 70%, and the global market share has exceeded 30%, which has effectively promoted the autonomy of domestic automobile equipment.
Experts in the industry believe that the maturity of many key technologies such as reliability design and performance testing technology of machine tool products and multi-axis linkage processing technology has been greatly improved in the past few years. Domestic high-end five-axis linkage machine tools have entered the market.
Guo Changcheng, deputy secretary general of China Machine Tool & Tool Industry Association, said that since the implementation of the special project, the whole industry has achieved great development, a number of key core technologies have made breakthroughs, independent innovation capability has been improved, and the overall design, manufacturing capability and level of CNC machine tools have been improved. Both have been effectively upgraded and are currently in the tough stage of industrialization and marketing applications.
Blocked, the "derogatory" past in the field of numerical control
For experts in the field of CNC machine tools, there is very little that is more memorable than the “Toshiba Machine Tool Event” that occurred in 1983.
This year, Toshiba Corporation of Japan sold several five-axis CNC milling machines to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union used it to manufacture nuclear submarines to propel the propellers, so that the noise of the propellers in the water was greatly reduced, so that the US sonar could not detect the Soviet submarines. The trend. The sales of the CNC machine tools also made the Soviet Union's equipment manufacturing industry a grade. Today, the US military's voices are difficult to monitor the Russian military submarines. To this end, the US Department of Defense launched an investigation and eventually sent Toshiba’s senior executives to prison and prohibited Toshiba from exporting any goods to any socialist country for one year. That year, China could not buy Toshiba Electric, or even a Toshiba battery.
At that time, what was the situation of China's machine tool manufacturing industry? The main machine tools that can be manufactured in China are ordinary machine tools. The research and production of CNC machine tools is just beginning. The CNC system basically relies on foreign technology and cannot develop independently. It is too far from the international frontier.
Wang Yong said that until today, the United States, Japan and other countries still banned the sale of high-tech manufacturing equipment to China, including high-end CNC equipment such as five-axis CNC machine tools.
There are still many "short boards" to overcome
It is worth mentioning that despite the impressive results, there are still many “short boards” in domestic CNC products that need to be overcome.
On the one hand, China's CNC machine tools are mainly low-end products, and high-end CNC machine tools mainly rely on imports. At present, the domestic import of machine tools still accounts for about one-third of the total. The high-end CNC machine tools have a large gap between the precision and speed of international cutting-edge technology and the dependence on imports. According to relevant industry reports, the import rate of high-end CNC products reached 80%.
On the other hand, the serious lag in the development of CNC systems and functional components has also plagued the entire industry. Wang Yong emphasized that the implementation of major special projects in these years has promoted technological progress in the industry, but it must be noted that compared with the rapid development of host technology, the research and development and production of high-end CNC systems and components are still in a relatively backward situation.
Compared with developed countries, China's machine tool industry started late, with shorter development time and relatively backward technology. Although the industrial scale ranks first in the world, it faces many challenges such as unreasonable industrial structure and weak independent innovation capability. In the process of development of China's machine tool industry, it is necessary to accelerate the shortcomings of the reality, and under the guidance of clear industrial development goals and development priorities, systematically upgrade the industrial common technology level, and vigorously promote the development of high-end CNC machine tools. The transition from a manufacturing power to a manufacturing power.