While the domestic manufacturing industry is surging, Zhuhai companies represented by Wangpan and Heshi have already laid out the basic field of China's manufacturing technology upgrade - precision manufacturing.
In the Sanzao Industrial Park in Jinwan District, Zhuhai, Wangpan Company is helping several large shoe factories in Jinjiang, the capital of China's shoe industry, to develop an overall solution for intelligent shoe mold manufacturing. The basis of this solution is the company's independently developed high-end five-axis linkage automatic machine tool.
"Five-axis linkage machine tools are a kind of machine tool with high technological content and high precision, specially used for processing complex curved surfaces. It is also the only mature means that can solve the processing of impellers, blades, marine propellers, heavy generator rotors, turbine rotors, large diesel engine crankshafts, etc." said Tan Zhenhong, executive director of Wangpan Company.
He told reporters that for a long time in the past, high-precision processing equipment such as five-axis linkage machine tools were monopolized by European and American countries, and domestically they could only rely on imports. In order to break the foreign technical blockade, the company started the research and development of five-axis linkage machine tools in 2007, and successfully developed and produced 3 prototypes by 2010.
However, due to problems such as control systems and overall coordination of machines, there was still a distance from the 0.02 mm machining accuracy of the international five-axis linkage machine tools at that time. The best data of the prototype has always been between 0.02 and 0.03 mm. In the development of machine tools, every leap in accuracy is a difficult exploration.
In order to achieve mainstream technology, Wangpan's R&D team took a different approach and started with the development of control systems. First, they purchased a domestic top digital control system and conducted in-depth research and development on its basis. After more than three years of research and development, modification and debugging, the machining accuracy of the new five-axis linkage machining center has reached the world-class level of 0.01 mm.
Recalling the scene of success, Tan Zhenhong is still very excited. "Compared with the five-axis machine tools with 3-axis and 2-axis operation modes launched by several domestic state-owned enterprises, this is the first time we have broken the monopoly and blockade of five-axis simultaneous linkage technology in Europe, the United States and Japan, greatly reducing the domestic industrial application cost."
While Wangpan was struggling to pursue international technology, Heshi, which was engaged in automated mechanical processing equipment, made a beautiful comeback in the case of foreign companies' technology monopoly market.
Zhang Yunyan, the company's director and deputy general manager of operations, told reporters that the company's flagship product, the deburring machine, was once monopolized by foreign companies. Deburring is the last step in the precision machining of metal parts, that is, removing the thorns or flash formed on the edges of the parts. The quality of the machine in the process determines the quality of the final product of the metal parts. In the case of backward domestic industry, deburring machines were once all imported from foreign companies such as Mitsubishi in Japan.
"Faced with technological competition, after the establishment of Heshi in 2004, we began to adopt the strategy of imitating Japanese deburring machines and looking for small and medium-sized enterprises as purchase targets. With the continuous accumulation of technology, we have developed more efficient machines based on foreign equipment. Now our deburring machine products are at the international leading level. More than 90% of the refrigeration compressor deburring machine products in the domestic market come from Heshi." Zhang Yunyan said.
Non-standard equipment research and development is always on the road
Whether it is to break the technological monopoly or the market monopoly, small and medium-sized enterprises such as Wangpan and Heshi always regard innovation as their core competitiveness.
In fact, both Wangpan's machine tools and Heshi's deburring machines are non-standard automation equipment in precision manufacturing. The so-called non-standard automation equipment mainly provides targeted automation product technical solutions and drawing design solutions according to customer requirements during the product sales process, and also provides customers with product installation guidance, equipment after-sales maintenance, technical personnel training and other services.
"For a non-standard manufacturing company, each product provided to the corresponding company is an innovation process." In Zhang Yunyan's view, the research and development of non-standard equipment is always on the road. When the company occupied 90% of the domestic refrigeration compressor deburring machine market, the research and development of new products was imminent. Heshi set its sights on the industrial robot industry.
"The essence of industrial robots is still automated processing equipment, and we have accumulated a lot of experience in this area in the manufacturing process of deburring machines. Using these technical foundations, our product production has expanded to non-standard industrial robot manufacturing. In 2011, we developed the first non-standard truss robot product, and now there are four or five series." Zhang Yunyan said.
He introduced that the truss robot mainly refers to the loading and unloading manipulator, which is mainly used in the field of machining, replacing the traditional manual loading and unloading, making the entire production process safer, avoiding direct contact between the human body and the machine tool, and can greatly save production costs and improve the factory's output efficiency and profits. "At present, automobile companies such as Mitsubishi and Dongfeng Nissan are our customers."
Heshi Enterprise has actively switched to non-standard industrial robots and has achieved great results, while Wangpan has developed the non-standard market based on high-end five-axis linkage automatic machine tools. "The domestic machine tool industry market is still occupied by HAMUEL, HERMLE, DMG, LIECHT, etc., and the market share of domestic prominent companies such as Shenyang Group is still small. Having technology but no market is also one of the embarrassments faced by the domestic machine tool industry." Tan Zhenhong said.
How to break the market monopoly? Tan Zhenhong believes that Wangpan should take the path of "tailor-made" machine tools. In recent years, Wangpan has successfully developed a five-axis linkage shoe mold machine based on its independently developed high-end five-axis linkage automatic machine tool. The machine can increase the efficiency of shoe mold manufacturing by more than double and reduce 80% of labor demand. If the whole factory is put into use, it can save more than 2 million yuan per year for a shoe factory with 400 people.
"Relying on this shoe film machine that integrates all the processes of shoe mold manufacturing, we can reshape the traditional shoe mold manufacturing production line, make it highly intelligent and integrated, and reduce the increasingly high labor, land and factory costs of shoe manufacturers in China." Tan Zhenhong told reporters that currently many domestic shoe manufacturers are interested in introducing this product.
