Although China has a large number of trade surpluses each year, it is a deficit every year in the mold industry. According to the data provided by the China Die and Mould Industry Association, since the beginning of the 21st century, China's mold sales have grown at an average annual rate of about 20%. In 2009, China's mold product sales reached nearly 100 billion yuan. However, the trade deficit of the mold industry is about 1 billion yuan each year. Why is the mold industry, the mother of industry, weak in exports? In order to reveal the trade deficit of the mold and discuss the long-term development of the mold, Luo Baihui, executive secretary general of the International Die & Metal and Plastic Industry Suppliers Association, conducted an in-depth analysis.

According to customs statistics, in 2008, China’s total mold import and export volume was US$3.926 billion. Among them, the total import volume was 2.004 billion U.S. dollars and the total export volume was 1.92 billion U.S. dollars. In 2009, China’s total import and export of molds was US$3.807 billion, a decrease of 3.03% over 2008. The total amount of imports was 1.964 billion U.S. dollars, which was 2% lower than in 2008; the total export volume was 1.843 billion U.S. dollars, which was 4.11% lower than in 2008. In 2009, affected by the international financial crisis, both import and export volumes declined, and the deficit has always existed. Why did you keep the mold trade deficit? Luo Baihui believes there are two main reasons:

1. The state encourages the impact of import policies.

Instead of “cultivating” the technology, it means “buying” it. This is the strategy for the development of the industry that our company has always insisted on. We are aware of the technical disadvantages in the technology, especially in the core manufacturing field. Both countries and enterprises are interested in changing the current passive situation, in order to accelerate the pace of development and shorten the time for technological upgrading. Both governments and companies tend to buy technology and machinery, and equipment must be highly configurable. It takes time to nurture talented people and it is better to buy them more conveniently. Nowadays, many private enterprises have more advanced equipment than foreign companies and are more advanced than Japan. They also employ Japanese technicians, technical consultants, and deputy general managers to conduct on-site guidance. It is that we have spared no effort to introduce high-priced machinery and equipment and talent to maintain the trade deficit for so many years.

2, in the high-end technology to be improved.

At present, more than 40% of the world's mold products are manufactured in China. Several of the world's top IT and digital products are manufactured by China. The level of China in the field of mold manufacturing has been in line with international standards. However, in the field of high-end precision machine tool technology, we still have a gap, mainly because the countries that master the technology are limiting the outflow of technology. Japan and Germany restrict export to high-end machine tools, such as DMG's high-end five-axis linkage machine tools. Limiting exports to China. Even the employment of high-end technical personnel in the field is limited, and they are worried that the loss of personnel will also be accompanied by the outflow of technology. Another more important factor is that we do not cultivate talents and do not pay attention to the habit of technology research and development. This reason is related to the above "pay attention only to buy."

How to make the Chinese mold industry grow healthier?

1. National policies should be re-trained.

On the one hand, it accords equal treatment to foreign and private enterprises, and we must listen to the voice of the industry in taxation and other policies. Previously, the mold importing proposal that was highly concerned by the automotive industry proposed that the taxation standards should not be divided according to the "B-class" "wheelbase" and "displacement", but be divided according to the price, that is, if the imported mold is produced. Cars with more than 300,000 yuan are recommended to be exempt from taxes, or they will be taxed according to the regulations. Such a proposal has promoted the production of some medium- and low-quality molds in the country and is indeed conducive to the development of the domestic industry.

On the other hand, the state focuses on cultivating a number of key enterprises. The development over the past few years has greatly improved the level of China's mold manufacturing technology, and some of them have approached or reached international levels. The list of 95 key Chinese mold companies that have been announced includes the key players in China's automotive panel molds. Enterprises, key large-scale precision plastic mold enterprises in China, major mold and die enterprises in China, such as mold casting key enterprises, also include small-scale mold and die enterprises such as China's key plastic extrusion molding molds and key enterprises of China's special glass molds. Play a "leadership" role.

2, the development of cluster production methods.

Mould City (Park, agglomeration production base) and mold alliance can provide a wide range of mold companies to provide a wide range of services. As an important part of the Informatization Promotion Project for SMEs in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Mould Service Platform for the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in the Mould Industry--the symposium on the construction of the lean R&D service platform for small and medium-sized enterprises in the mold industry will be established by the State as a target for the SMEs in the real economy A specific form of service platform will surely help the construction of the park, improve the level of small and medium-sized mold enterprises, and the public information service platform will develop faster. Its various service functions and the promotion of the productivity of the majority of SMEs will also be improved. More apparent.

In recent years, mold cluster production methods have been developed. There are more than 50 "mold cities" in the country. The "mold cities" that have been built include Dongguan Hengli Mould City, Zhejiang Yuyao Mould City, Kunshan Jiangsu Province Mould Industry Experimental Area, and Ninghai Mould. City, China (Botou) Auto Mould Township, Huangqi Mould City, Changsha International Mould City, Chengdu Mould Industrial Park, Beilun Mould Industry Park, Dalian Mould City, etc. have played an active role, while extending the industrial chain, reducing the overall operating costs and promoting Internal competition and cooperation within the cluster promote the formation of professional markets and production bases. Cluster-based production methods are not designed to attract more factories. The ultimate goal is to share platforms and increase production levels together.

3, rigorous training of talent, to more difficult and more complex challenges.

Luo Baihui, executive secretary of the International Mould, Hardware and Plastics Industry Suppliers Association, believes that talent is the key to influencing corporate concepts. It is a talent problem. Why can't we produce large, complex molds? Also talent. Technology can be bought, equipment can be bought, but talent can only be trained by us. At present, many companies have widely used CAD, CAM, CAE, CAPP, PDM, PLM, MES, ERP and other production tools, but also pay attention to high-tech, but still lack of human culture. To truly break through the bottleneck of China's mold technology, mold and die enterprises should re-evaluate the use of personnel, stabilize the structure of the enterprise's technical personnel, and the technical R&D team can accumulate innovations and breakthroughs after a period of time. Only in this way can we break through the monopoly of foreign giants in high-end technology, get rid of passive technology imports, and usher in the real development of Chinese molds. 4. To develop high-end machine tools and equipment, and actively respond to high-precision mold products. To larger, more sophisticated, more complex and more economical and rapid development, China's mold production has also increasingly generated greater benefits. Luo Baihui believes that on the battlefield of import and export, we are still passive and at a disadvantage. We must change the development of the mold industry, start with exports, and establish an export industry that belongs to the people of the country, so as to get rid of the destiny of the foundry industry and grasp the initiative of trade. .

At present, China has been able to produce a full set of automotive molds for passenger cars and other passenger cars and commercial vehicles with Grade B and lower grades. It is an accurate, high-speed, multi-position advancement with an accuracy of 2μm and a life expectancy of over 200 million times for the electronics industry. Die, a single set of molds weighing over 100 tons of giant molds, up to 6 meters of large-scale multi-position advanced molds, light guide plate molds, optical disk molds, biochip molds and many other high-level molds. The multi-position progressive die produced by some companies can be used on high-speed punch presses of 2000 times per minute, with an accuracy of 1 μm. In terms of large-scale plastic molds, China has been able to produce plastic molds for 43-inch large-screen color TVs and 65-inch rear-projection TVs, plastic molds for car bumpers and overall instrument panels. In the field of precision plastic molds, China has been able to produce plastic parts for camera and mobile phones, small-size multi-cavity gear molds, and 7800-cavity plastic molds with a precision of 5μm.

With the development of manufacturing industry, the miniaturization of product parts and the improvement of precision require higher and higher requirements on the accuracy of mold processing. Some molds require processing accuracy within 1μm, which requires the development of superfinishing. Micron precision machining for automobiles, aircraft, and precision machinery; submicron (0.01μm) precision machining for disk and drum manufacturing; nanoscale (0.001μm) precision machining for ultra-precision electronics.

The increasing size of mold forming parts and the high productivity of parts require a single mold and multiple chambers. Molds from several tons to several tens of tons are common, with a few hundred cavities and even thousands of cavities. Therefore, it is required that the workbench of the machine tool can bear heavy weight. This requires the equipment to have characteristics of large load-bearing capacity and high rigidity, and it must also have a large enough table size and working schedule to adapt to it. In addition, the mold cavity is mostly composed of complex space six curved surfaces and grooves, and many molds have deep hole cavities, which requires the machine tool to have multi-axis linkage and good comprehensive deep-hole cavity cutting capability in order to achieve 3D surface High precision, high speed and high stability processing.