The development of China's mold industry has achieved extraordinary success so far. With the rapid development of the Chinese economy, industrial production requires more high-quality and diverse molds. Faced with such a huge market, foreign machine tool manufacturers have long been eyeing it. However, in the face of the "invasion" of the strong, most domestic machine tool manufacturers have the suspicion of "indifference".

Although there are many factors that led to this situation, it is an undeniable fact that the big cake was divided. How to "regain" the market should be a question for domestic machine tool manufacturers to consider!

The mold market is difficult to resist temptation

In 2004, the output value of Chinese molds (excluding data from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) was 53 billion yuan, an increase of 17.8% over the previous year. The export value of molds was 491 million US dollars, an increase of 45.7% over the previous year (both exceeding the target of a production value of 49 billion yuan and an export value of 300 million US dollars set in the "15th Five Year Plan" for 2005). The import volume was 1.813 billion US dollars, an increase of 32.4% over the previous year, and the foreign trade deficit of molds reached 1.322 billion US dollars. In 2005, the growth rate of the Chinese mold market was also over 15%, which means that the total output value of Chinese molds in 2005 is likely to exceed 60 billion yuan.

For a period of time, the demand for mold processing equipment in the mold industry mainly includes the following types: CNC machining centers, CNC milling and CNC profiling milling machines, EDM forming machines, wire cutting machines, coordinate grinders, coordinate boring machines, boring and milling machines, forming grinders, optical curve grinders, band saws, deep hole drills, electrode processing machines, engraving machines, polishing machines, mold clamping machines, coordinate measuring machines, scanning machines, special machines for mold standard part processing, high-performance heat treatment equipment, rapid prototyping equipment, various cutting tools and sharpening machines, software such as mold CAD, CAM, CAE, PDM, computer workstations and microcomputers, etc.

With the continuous development of advanced technologies such as parallel engineering and reverse engineering in mold processing, mold processing has put forward requirements for CNC machines in terms of digital transmission conversion, multi axis linkage, high precision, high efficiency, high flexibility, automation, etc; Requirements have been put forward for electrical machining equipment in terms of high efficiency, low loss, high precision, mirror processing, electrical discharge numerical control milling, and machining centers; Requirements have been put forward for the three coordinate measuring machine, including high precision, high speed (measuring multiple dimensions within a certain period of time), easy operation, three-dimensional scanning digital system, low voltage contact and non-contact measurement, high flexibility and online measurement on site, and strong software functionality. In short, mold processing equipment should enable mold enterprises to achieve high precision, high efficiency, high flexibility, and even automated processing, and meet the requirements of mold manufacturing for high quality, low cost, long life, and short cycle as much as possible.