As we all know, mold is known as the "mother of industry" and one of the central technologies of manufacturing industry. At the dmc2021 China International Mold Technology and equipment exhibition, cutting-edge CNC new media had the honor to invite Mr. Ruan Anye, senior minister of Makino machine tool marketing department, to stop in-depth interpretation of the current hot issues in the mold processing industry.

Mr. Ruan Anye, senior minister of Muye machine tool marketing department

Cutting edge CNC: Makino in this DMC exhibition, mainly shows the automation plan of less human and unmanned consumption. What is the starting point?

Minister Ruan: at present, most mold enterprises are facing the problem of "people". The lack of skilled workers, the difficulty of recruiting suitable skilled workers, and the difficulty of retaining excellent skilled workers have become the pain point of mold enterprise management.

As an equipment supplier, we stop developing from the function, processing accuracy, automation and other aspects of the equipment, and strive to provide the industry with some plans for less personalized or even unmanned consumption, hoping to help the industry deal with some pain points.

Cutting edge CNC: some people think that today's mold processing industry is very difficult. What changes have taken place in the mold processing industry in recent years? What do you think?

Minister Ruan: the domestic mold processing industry has experienced difficulties in recent years. One is the vicious competition of low quality and price war, and the other is the overcapacity caused by low-level repeated investment, which leads to the loss and even elimination of some mold enterprises.

We should also see that many mold enterprises have seized the development opportunities after the original precipitation stage, and are gradually developing towards some medium and high-end molds and even leading the direction of the period. Among the world's leading mold enterprises, there have been more and more Chinese companies, which are glowing with vitality.

Today, China's mold processing industry once had a solid foundation, huge demand and perfect manufacturing platform. Its future must be bright. I also believe that China will become the largest and strongest mold manufacturing country in the world.

Cutting edge CNC: please talk about the development status and future needs of automation in the domestic mold processing industry.

Minister Ruan: as for automation, the mold processing industry has stopped exploring for many years, and many problems will be encountered in this process. At present, the vast majority of mold enterprises still adopt the traditional manufacturing form, and everyone wants to do automation, but the key is that this direction is difficult to find.

After some users started automation, the machine tool did complete discontinuous processing, and the productivity improved, but the consumption efficiency did not improve. Because mold manufacturing belongs to discrete consumption manufacturing, its automatic consumption needs to consider many elements, especially technical details. If you don't stop thinking about these details comprehensively, it's just automation for automation. At present, there are few users who have done well in the application of fully automated consumption in the mold processing industry.

There are some users who, after having a thorough understanding of their consumption forms, implement automation targeted, and often achieve good results. For example, at this exhibition, we showed the automation application case of Qingdao haityco. This company basically summarized the processing of parts such as their large mold inserts and sliders, standardized and regularized their past experience, and adopted Makino's flexible consumption system, thus achieving the ideal effect. Originally, haityco needed more than a dozen machine tools to process this kind of parts, equipped with more than a dozen operation technicians. Now it adopts Makino's flexible consumption line, with four machine tools, each class can be equipped with one operation technician.

Therefore, the automation of mold manufacturing needs to be reasonably arranged and implemented according to the actual processing conditions and process conditions of the factory, so as to achieve the expected effect. We also hope to provide more customers with Makino's experience. Let's discuss it together and help our mold users find the most suitable automation path.

In the future, the mold processing industry must have more and more demand for automation or less human operation. Nowadays, the number of young people interested in the mold processing industry is decreasing, and the number of employees in this industry will decrease in the future. I think this is a challenge for the needs of the whole industry, and everyone should basically go this way.

Cutting edge numerical control: when the intelligent level of machine tools is not high, the processing results depend on the experience of technicians. With the higher and higher intelligent level of machine tools such as Makino, what changes have taken place in the request of technicians? How do you treat "experience"?

Minister Ruan: let me give a simple example. For example, the appearance finishing of large molds in the automotive mold processing industry requires manual tool receiving. The quality of tool receiving directly affects the length of subsequent mold polishing time and the quality of molds, and the quality of tool receiving is determined by the experience of operating technicians.

Nowadays, many customers can directly complete high-quality appearance processing without manual tool receiving due to its high five axis processing accuracy after introducing Makino v80s, v90s and other equipment. From this perspective, high-precision intelligent equipment can reduce the dependence on technician experience.

With the progress of equipment technology, some traditional experiences will gradually be replaced by intelligent technology, which is inevitable. But in terms of intelligence, automation, standardization and digitalization, we also need engineers with rich experience and strong ability to summarize and summarize, so this is a dialectical relationship. It is very important that our experience needs to keep pace with the times.

Cutting edge CNC: in the era of intelligent manufacturing, is it still necessary to talk about "craftsman spirit"?

Minister Ruan: This is necessary. The essence of craftsman's body is the icing on the cake. Even in the era of intelligent manufacturing, the essence of the essence of the icing on the cake cannot be lost. Our manufacturing needs can reach a higher level only in the process of constantly pursuing icing on the cake.

Cutting edge CNC: About high-precision CNC machine tools, which do you think is more important, reliability or innovation? Talk about Makino's idea.

Minister Ruan: both of them are indispensable. Both of them will be coordinated.

First of all, reliability is the foundation of the equipment. Without reliability, no matter how innovative the equipment and its function are, there is no way to play its function, let alone talk about automation. The reason why Makino's equipment can win the high recognition of the market is that its reliability is one of the outstanding advantages, which is also the direction we continue to pursue. At the same time, innovation is also very important. As long as the innovation ability leads the trend of the times, the application of innovation changes the traditional processing forms of customers, and helps customers greatly improve consumption efficiency.

Cutting edge CNC: what is the market momentum of Makino in China in 2021?

Minister Ruan: since the second half of last year, due to the global epidemic, a large part of the global production capacity has been transferred to China. In addition, there is a huge internal circulation demand in China. It should be said that the momentum of the whole machine tool industry in 2021 is probably the most prosperous in history, not just Makino.

Cutting edge CNC: with the market share of Makino machine tools expanding from time to time, what measures are there in terms of service?

Minister Ruan: in addition to strengthening the original technical support and service team, we have also made some innovative attempts in service methods, such as IOT remote support, cloud college training and so on. In the past few years, we have made a lot of investment in these areas. We hope to apply some new technology to help customers deal with problems quickly.

Where is the road of mold processing industry? In the fierce market competition, it has ushered in a period of waves washing sand. It is imperative to improve competitiveness, and there will be a future when we make efforts to manufacture medium and high-end molds! A few are happy and a few are sad. Those mold enterprises and mold talents who keep pace with the times are the leaders on the mold road!