Japan's mold industry has shifted its focus to overseas operations

Mold manufacturing is a typical single-piece and small-batch production method, but in Japan's mold manufacturing enterprises, NC machine tools, machining centers (MC), or CNC EDM equipment have been widely used. According to the Nagoya gold company staff, due to the use of CNC machine tools, machining centers and other advanced processing equipment, greatly shorten the delivery time of the mold and reduce production costs. The delivery time of the company's automotive front and rear taillight shade injection molds is three months, of which the time for CAD and CAM is about 100 hours each, the machining time is about 100 hours, and the remaining time is polishing and assembly. In this small-scale mold factory, which mainly produces automotive front and rear tail lamp shade injection molds, among the more than 20 machining equipment, EDM processing equipment accounts for about 1/3, CNC milling and machining centers account for about 2/3, only 1 The deep bore gun drilling machine is semi-automatic equipment.

A high-speed machining center with a spindle speed of up to 20,000 rpm has two worktables. It uses a carbide ball end mill for machining, and the mold cavity surface machining accuracy can reach 0.01mm, which greatly improves the production efficiency and machining accuracy, and reduces the Polishing workload. Although advanced equipment is an absolute advantage, the polishing process is still done manually. Lampshade injection mold polishing is divided into rough polishing, fine polishing and fine polishing, etc. Polishing force, grain direction, cleanliness, etc. require experienced workers and strict operating regulations, otherwise it can not produce a good transparency lampshade.

In Japan's mold manufacturing companies, copy milling machines are rarely used because of the low accuracy of copy milling machines, which increases the amount of polishing work and time. Second, the production of profiling parts increases production costs and time. The use of EDM machines in some mold factories is also decreasing.

At the Toshiba Machine Tool Plant, several copy milling machines were used for ordinary milling. Its staff pointed out: As high-speed milling technology has developed rapidly, and the machining accuracy and efficiency have been continuously improved, and the production cycle has been shortened, the electrodes of electric discharge machining tools not only take time, but also increase the production cost and are likely to be replaced.

In Japan's mold manufacturing industry, the profile milling process has been replaced. Regarding high-speed milling, it is a hot topic in the Japanese mold manufacturing industry and the machine tool industry. One of the key technologies is to require high-precision, high-speed machine tool spindles, and the second is to use high-speed cutting, high temperature resistant milling cutters.

The model of the high-speed milling center used by Nagoya Gold is Makino a77 (three-axis CNC), which uses a dedicated high-speed air bearing milling head with a speed of up to 20,000 rpm. In the production of forgings based on Universal Industrial Co., Ltd., the use of Switzerland and Japan Matsuura fx-5 high-speed CNC milling machine (milling cutter speed up to 30000rpm, milling accuracy 0.01mm) processing forging die, the milling machine is also equipped with a dedicated CAM software. Japan's Okuma Metal Cutting Machine Tool Company developed and produced a 5-axis high-speed die machining center Okuma micr-bi-hp (n=30000rpm, f=30m/min), and equipped the machine tool and product with CAD/CAM software.

It is understood that in recent years, the output value of the Japanese mold industry has decreased year by year, mold expert Luo Baihui believes that the Japanese mold industry has reached the point of non-reform. Luo Baihui said that compared with other manufacturing industries, the Japanese mold industry has a heavier cost burden on mold processing equipment and a heavier cost burden on mold processing equipment. Therefore, the depreciation rate of equipment directly affects the revenue, plus major customers, from cars to automobiles. Semiconductor and other industries are gradually shifting outwards. In order to increase operating efficiency, the mold industry in the country also has to shift its business focus overseas.

Japan's mold production capacity accounts for about 40% of the world's total, ranking first in the world. However, after peaking at a peak value of 1.87 trillion yen in 1998, it showed a recession. In addition, based on the large-scale development of molds in other Asian countries and regions, regardless of cost or technology in this region are quite competitive, affected by the establishment of a versatile mold production system, Japan's mold prices have also dropped by about 20% in recent years.

At present, the business dilemma of the Japanese mold industry is roughly summarized as the instability of orders, price cuts for orders, inability to cope with the shortened delivery time, high technology, and increasingly stringent quality requirements. In view of this development background, in addition to making more efforts in high-precision machining technology, how to distinguish it from general molds and create high-value-added processing products is the direction of the Japanese mold industry, which is also the face of other Asian countries and regions. New topic.

Although the "fitter" trapped in the small and medium mold manufacturers often appear, but large mold manufacturers have their own worries, China FAW Mold Manufacturing Co., Ltd. is one of them.

As a leading company in China's mold industry and the earliest body mold manufacturing plant in China, FAW Mold Manufacturing Co., Ltd. has provided molds, master models, inspection fixtures, welding fixtures and other molds for entire vehicles or parts for FAW and dozens of manufacturers throughout the country. And technical services, such a large mold manufacturing company already has some experience in production management, but Li Gong of its process design department is still worried, because the big manufacturers like FAW mold, often have nearly thousands of molds in the system at the same time There are many sets, and in these hundreds of thousands of procedures often contain a lot of process knowledge, if you rely entirely on artificial statistics, it is difficult to achieve effective accumulation. "This kind of knowledge waste is even more pity than the waste of resources." Li Gong sighed. If he encounters the same process again, he still needs to spend a lot of time redesigning the process, which greatly delays the production lead time.

In addition, when the customer proposes new requirements to make the product change, some parts need to modify the process, but often the workpiece is still processed in accordance with the original process, because it can not be suspended in time, not only causing waste, but also affect the delivery of the mold period.