Machine tools are known to us, its birth and large-scale application let us get rid of the traditional handicraft industry, and now it is the basis for the development of modern manufacturing, so it is also known as "industrial mother machine".
But for a long time, the public's attitude towards domestic machine tools has been "singing the decline", and some people even ridiculed: if there are no Japanese machine tools, China can not build anything, aircraft carriers, aircraft can only stay on the design drawings!
This kind of remarks are obviously emotional, but also too exaggerated, the mainland machine tool field has indeed been "lonely" for a long time, but many people do not know that it has also been brilliant, as for the story behind this transformation is full of emotion.
The history of the development of domestic machine tools
The development of China's machine tool manufacturing industry is relatively slow. As early as the eighteenth century, British scientists made the first machine tools, and the machine tools at that time were relatively simple, somewhat similar to sewing machines, with only the simplest two movable rods and tool holders.
After the industrial revolution, Western machine tools have also developed rapidly, and advanced CNC machine tools have been developed.
Before China's reform and opening up, there were no slightly more advanced machine tools, only according to the simple machine tools imitated by the West, until the founding of New China, the country must first restore industry, and then have the idea of developing machine tools. However, at that time, the mainland's economy was very backward, so the development of machine tools was also very difficult, and I could only explore the development by myself.
In 1949, China only developed the first machine tool, and two years later, a slightly advanced machine tool was developed, but China is in ruins, only two machine tools are not enough, and the performance is not ideal.
Subsequently, China gathered the efforts of the whole country to jointly develop machine tools, and subdivided each part to different machine tool factories. China first imported machine tools from the Soviet Union, disassembled them, and added their own ideas to transform and upgrade, after continuous research, China finally manufactured the first truly national lathe - C620-1 in 1955.
Because of its great significance, it was later engraved on the 2 yuan banknote issued in 1960, which became a memory of the older generation Chinese. This machine tool is more in line with the development needs of China at that time.
The famous "turner duo"
Chinese researchers were encouraged, and then China began to develop more difficult machine tools. Many countries are afraid that China's machine tool development will surpass them, refuse to share technology with China, in this case, China's machine tool research is more difficult, finally in 1958, Chinese researchers overcame difficulties, developed China's first CNC machine tool X53K1, at this time the development of Western machine tools is only about ten years ahead of the mainland.
The first CNC machine tool in mainland China: X53K1
In the following decades, China's machine tools realized the self-production of parts, and the degree of advancement was even no less than that of foreign countries. In 2012, China's machine tool manufacturing ushered in the peak moment.
For a long time, the mainland has invested a lot of money in technological development, and the mainland's machine tool manufacturing has not only achieved a breakthrough from scratch, but also moved towards the world's first in many high-end parts and components.
However, with the advancement of technology and the rapid development of the times, China's machine tool manufacturing status has also undergone earth-shaking changes. Mainland machine tool manufacturing from refined to large-scale, simply put, is small machine tools we can produce a lot, but more advanced machine tools need to be imported, in recent years, mainland high-end machine tools are almost all dependent on imports.
From world-class to now, it depends on imports
One of the biggest reasons is technology. Although China has made great breakthroughs in machine tool manufacturing, and can also produce machine tools on a large scale, even surpassing countries such as Japan and South Korea.
However, with the development of technology, foreign machine tool manufacturing technology is also constantly improving. Due to the lack of talents and capital technology, the mainland still has some shortcomings in the manufacture of the core process of machine tools, so there is relatively no foreign advanced in terms of performance and quality, and it needs to be imported from abroad.
The second is the reason for the market. China's machine tool manufacturing was once silent for the development of scale, economic globalization is getting stronger and stronger, and the market is becoming more and more open, which stimulates the development of the machine tool market.
During this period, the machine tools of Japan and Germany developed rapidly and broadened the international market, and increased many after-sales systems, occupying a certain share of the market, and the opportunity to compete when the Chinese machine tool industry reacted to the competition was very small.
Finally, the industrial agglomeration of machine tools has declined. When the development of mainland machine tools is the best, the agglomeration of industries is very strong and various industries are very perfect.
Now with the adjustment of national policies and the competition of the machine tool market, China's machine tool manufacturers are also constantly dispersed, the technology and market of the entire industry have been seriously hit, large manufacturers "rotten" each other, small manufacturers fall apart, either merged, or on the way to be merged.
Just like the sales of 18 billion yuan in 2012, ranking first in the world, the famous Shenyang Machine Tool Group cannot escape the fate of restructuring.
The decline in industrial agglomeration has led to a growing gap in China's machine tool manufacturing, and the mainland's machine tool manufacturing strength has continued to decline.
Epilogue:
Although the mainland has achieved very proud results in the machine tool manufacturing industry, it has to face that China's current machine tool manufacturing industry has been surpassed, which also reflects the reality that if you cannot improve yourself, you will be eliminated by the times, and there are many challenges we need to face in the future.