The development of high-end CNC machine tools cannot be separated from the “hard power” of the enterprise’s own innovation and research and development, but also from the advantages of technical exchange and cooperation, scale and synergy effect, and market resource sharing brought by industrial clusters. For the machine tool industry, industrial clusters are not a new concept, but the industry has developed to today, and the connotation of industrial clusters is also constantly enriched, representing a higher degree of industrial agglomeration and supporting capabilities, and can provide a more complete industrial chain and service chain.

As an important gathering area of the machine tool industry in China, Wenling Machine tool equipment industry in Zhejiang Province, the host of the third Industrial high-quality development Forum, started in the 1970s and 1980s, and has changed from the production of simple general lathe to economic CNC lathe and high-end CNC machine tool for more than 40 years. Gradually formed to CNC machine tools, special machine tools, work-based industrial pattern, and set manufacturing, sales, research and development as one of the industrial system. Not only emerged a number of CNC machine tool enterprises such as Beiping Machine tool, Eastern CNC, Volkswagen Precision Machine, and Shenao Machine tool, but also trained a number of key parts of machine tool backbone enterprises such as Central CNC and Sanhe CNC. At present, Wenling machine tool equipment industrial cluster has more than 1200 enterprises of all kinds, with an output value of more than 30 billion yuan, and has built a complete industrial chain of “whole machine, functional components, and working quantity and cutting tools”.

“The difference between us and international brands is that one is the CNC system and the other is the grinding process software.” Yu Ronghua, chairman of Beiping Machine Tool (Zhejiang) Co., LTD., said that these shortcomings must be made up and cannot be “stuck”. This idea became more firm after Beiping Machine Tool took the lead in organizing the technical research consortium to undertake the special project of major short-board equipment of industrial mother-machine. At present, the autonomy rate of the company’s core components has reached more than 90%. In recent years, 8% of the annual investment value is used for new product research and development, which has become a practice of Beiping machine Tools. These layouts refer to “core technology controllable”.

In addition, with the help of the enterprise consortium, Zhejiang Province high-end CNC machine tool technology innovation center settled in Wenling in February this year, the goal is also to break through a number of CNC machine tool field “jam neck” technology, and promote the industrialization of major basic research results, drive the integration and innovation of upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain, and support the construction of innovative industrial clusters.

PCD230A 3BHE022291R0101

PCD230A 3BHE022291R0101

PCD230A 3BHE022291R0101

Forward-looking layout to build an innovative “ecosystem”

Numerical control system and functional components are the core of China’s machine tool industry to high-end, intelligent upgrade, there is still a lack of high-level R & D institutions and manufacturing enterprises, and foreign competitors in this field are more powerful, technology, market threshold is higher than the host. Therefore, high-end CNC machine tools also need to follow the principle and mechanism of “demand traction, research promotion and collaborative innovation”, dynamically track the demand changes in key application areas, lay the foundation for key breakthroughs, take industrial application verification as assessment, constantly increase support around key core technologies such as CNC systems and functional components, and promote product iteration and upgrade and result transformation. Give full play to the role of the CNC machine tool industry brain that has been put into operation and the machine tool supply and demand docking platform, and work together to break through and create an innovation ecology.

“The market ecosystem and brand effect that enterprises in developed countries have formed has always been the knot that the domestic machine tool industry cannot solve and cannot break.” Chen Jihong, chairman of Wuhan Huazhong Numerical Control Co., LTD., said that the development of domestic machine tools and domestic numerical control system industry has experienced a difficult process of technology introduction, digestion and absorption, and independent development. Although the domestic high-end CNC system still lacks a large number of application verification, technology iteration opportunities, there is a big gap in research and development investment and technology maturity; Although the problem of “usable” has been solved, the problem of “easy to use, durable and easy to use” has not been fundamentally solved.

At present, more and more CNC enterprises are deeply integrated with upstream chip enterprises, midstream CNC device/servo drive and motor enterprises, and downstream machine tool manufacturing enterprises, and jointly research and promote the formation of the whole machine (system) and the interactive development of basic products, and the industrial chain collaborative innovation “ecosystem”. Chen Jihong introduced that in April this year, Huazhong Numerical Control officially released a new high-end five-axis numerical control system product package, the five-axis processing technology and digital, networking, intelligent technology comprehensive integration, in high-quality five-axis processing, machine measurement, remote operation and maintenance and other 11 key functions to meet the international advanced five-axis numerical control system standards.

“The development model of the whole industrial chain, the whole talent chain and the whole technology chain established by Kede Numerical Control can promote the continuous iteration and improvement of the company’s own product technology, and lay a solid foundation for the company’s product benchmarking international advanced products.” Chen Hu, general manager of Corde Numerical Control Co., LTD., said that the five-axis linkage CNC machine tool, high-grade CNC system and key functional components independently developed by the company are the first set in China. Since 2015, it has provided nearly 100 five-axis CNC machine tools to a number of aero engine main units under the China Aero Engine Group. Provided Guangxi Yuchai with 4 types, 12 horizontal machining centers, set up the first national Ⅵ standard passenger car engine cylinder head automatic production line, completed more than 300 parts of the processing verification and process rhythm optimization.