The CNC machine tool industry is the mother machine for intelligent manufacturing in the equipment manufacturing industry. Without the intelligence of CNC machine tools, it is almost impossible to achieve intelligent manufacturing in the equipment manufacturing industry. At the same time, the CNC system, as the brain of CNC machine tools, plays a very important role in CNC machine tools. Although China's CNC system has achieved significant development, over 90% of the CNC systems supporting high-end CNC machine tools are foreign products, especially high-end CNC machine tools.
The data shows that in 2019, China first achieved a trade surplus in the machine tool industry. The decline in demand for imported machine tools was mainly due to the realization of Import substitution industrialization in some areas of domestic products, while changes in trade rules increased the import restrictions on high-end machine tools. Some analysts believe that as the international situation continues to evolve, Western countries will continue to strengthen their technological blockade against China. Some high-end five axis linkage CNC machine tools are completely unable to be imported from abroad, which will lead to the problem of "bottleneck" in the strategic equipment production of important domestic enterprises.
Accelerating the upgrading of product structure and making breakthroughs in the higher end and high-tech machine tool market has become a key step for the overall development and growth of China's machine tool industry. China started relatively late in the intelligent technology of CNC machine tools. Currently, the vast majority of CNC machine tools produced do not have intelligent functions, and the overall industry still needs to make more efforts on the road to intelligent machine tools.
From the perspective of specific intelligent machine tool projects, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's project "Development and Demonstration Application of Digital Workshop for High Grade CNC Lathe Manufacturing" has demonstrative significance. The CNC rate of key equipment in this project is 100%, the production efficiency has been increased from 100 units per month to 300 units, the production line personnel has been reduced by 57.5%, energy consumption has been reduced by 38.4%, and the pass rate of key process inspection for parts has been increased from 64% to 96%, achieving significant economic benefits.
In addition, the "i5" series of intelligent machine tools successfully developed by Shenyang Machine Tool Co., Ltd. in China. Originally, one worker could produce 200 valve cover products using traditional machine tools per unit time, but instead, the i5 intelligent machine tool produced 800 products per unit time. Intelligent machine tools have increased the overall production efficiency of enterprises by an average of 60%.
High end equipment manufacturing enterprises, represented by aviation engine manufacturing enterprises, have an urgent demand for high-end CNC machine tools and CNC systems. Generally speaking, aviation engines still need to meet basic requirements such as high lifespan, reliability, energy conservation, and environmental protection under harsh working conditions. A large number of high-end CNC machine tools and high-end CNC systems can better meet the manufacturing characteristics of complex structure, high manufacturing difficulty, and high machining accuracy requirements of aviation engine components. Promoting the rapid development of high-end CNC machine tools is crucial and of great significance for the development of China's aerospace industry.
The intelligent technology of CNC machine tools in China is still in its infancy. The technological development process of "CNC machine tools - CNC machine tool intelligence - intelligent machine tools - intelligent manufacturing workshops - intelligent manufacturing factories - intelligent manufacturing large systems" is the development process of the machine tool industry. In summary, CNC machine tools and basic manufacturing equipment, as the foundation of manufacturing value generation and the fulcrum of industrial leap, are the core components of basic manufacturing capabilities. Only with a solid foundation of manufacturing capabilities can high-quality equipment be produced
