Japan's mold industry is gradually declining and needs reform and upgrading

Mold manufacturing is a typical single-piece, low-volume production method. However, mold manufacturing companies in Japan are responsible for the production of negative-neutral felt, nc machine tools, machining centers (mc), or cnc EDM equipment. According to the Nagoya gold company staff, due to the use of advanced machining equipment such as CNC machine tools, machining centers, greatly shortened the delivery time of the mold, reducing production costs. The delivery time of the front and rear taillight lampshade injection molds produced by the company is three months, of which the time for cad and cam is about 100 hours respectively, the machining time is about 100 hours, and the rest time is polishing and assembly. In this small-scale mold factory, which mainly produces automobile front and rear taillight lampshade injection molds, EDM forming equipment accounts for about 1/3 of the more than 20 machining equipments. CNC milling machines 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 occupies an absolute advantage, the polishing process is still manually performed by humans. Lampshade injection mold polishing is divided into rough casting, 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 of the lamp shade.

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 high-speed milling center model used by Nagoya Gold is Makinoa 77 (three-axis CNC), which uses a special high-speed pneumatic bearing milling head with a speed of up to 20,000 rpm. In the production of forging-based Wanneng Industry Co., Ltd., a forging die is machined using a Matsuura FFX-5 high-speed cnc milling machine (milling cutter rotation speed up to 30,000 rpm, milling accuracy 0.01 mm) manufactured by a joint venture between Switzerland and Japan. The milling machine is also equipped with a dedicated cam. software. Japan okuma metal cutting machine tool company developed and produced a five-axis high-speed die machining center okumamicr-bi-hp (n = 30000rpm, f = 30m/min), and equipped with the cad / cam software for the machine and products.

Recession in Japan's mold industry needs to be taken for granted. It is understood that in recent years, the output value of the Japanese mold industry has decreased year by year. Experts believe that the Japanese mold industry has reached the point where it cannot be reformed.

According to industry insiders, 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 profitability, plus major customers, from automobiles. As semiconductors and other industries gradually moved out of the country, the mold industry in the country had 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 has shown 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 operating dilemma of the Japanese mold industry is roughly summarized as unstable 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.