1. The current situation and prospects of the machine tool industry

In the past 30 years, with the gradual deepening of reform and opening up, China's economy has made great progress. Many new technologies and products from abroad are constantly impacting the domestic market in China, leading to the rapid development of manufacturing and processing industries, which has brought huge opportunities for the expansion and progress of the machine tool industry.

The machine tool industry in China has gradually expanded from large-scale manufacturing of small machine tools in the past to the proportion of large and medium-sized machine tools and complete line products. And with the continuous improvement of processing technology, the requirements for processing accuracy and speed are also increasing.

At present, there are tens of thousands of manufacturers in the national machine tool industry, most of which are mainly engaged in the production of low-end rough machining. However, in recent years, due to the soaring prices of materials and energy, as well as the monetary tightening policies adopted by the government, the growth rate of downstream industries has slowed down and profits have decreased. The growth rate of products with high added value will continue to increase, and profits will significantly increase. In the future, competition in the industry will inevitably shift towards a better market. So, more and more companies have begun to realize that China's machine tool industry, while sticking to the low-end field, should expand in product development and manufacturing, rather than relying more on imported equipment.

The machine tool industry uses a wide range of electrical products based on different equipment, from microcontrollers to, PLC， Positioning modules, CNC systems, motion control systems, and other related components are all involved, as well as electrical equipment independently developed by manufacturers. Some application fields, such as high-precision grinding machines, rotary tool libraries, servo stamping feeders, automated special machine assembly lines, etc., have special requirements for control and process. These are not ordinary pulse generation products or positioning products that can be simply matched. More and more motion control products are being used.

2. Introduction to Motion Control and Servo Products Mitsubishi has a rich product line in motion control and servo drive, which can correspond to various types of machine tools and equipment.

In terms of motion controllers, there are corresponding methods for 8-axis synchronous control, 32 axis synchronous control, and up to 1280 axis synchronous control. Moreover, Mitsubishi's motion controllers can support various machine tool industry applications through different operating system software. The operating system of SV13, with its dedicated SFC programming language, is widely used for interpolation actions in high-precision grinding equipment, while the operating system of SV22, with its mechanical support language, is widely used in multi axis high-speed high-precision synchronous control machine tools.

In terms of servo products, they have various inertia levels to meet the positioning control requirements of various equipment, and in terms of power, there are mature products ranging from 50W to 110kW. There are also various corresponding ways to achieve control for demand above 110kW.

3. Application and characteristics of the product in the machine tool industry

Below, we will introduce the application of Mitsubishi motion control products in the machine tool industry through two customer cases.

High performance servo stamping and feeding system

As mentioned earlier, the machine tool industry will shift towards a better market in the future, and higher requirements have been put forward for the compound intelligence of machine tools. Taking ordinary stamping equipment as an example, in the past, the equipment manually operated the stamped workpiece. With the continuous increase of labor costs in China, replacing manual operation with machines will be an inevitable trend. Therefore, high-performance stamping machine tools will be replaced by automatic feeding and retrieval systems. So how stamping equipment operates different stamping curves according to different workpieces, how the feeding system cooperates with the stamping system, and how to ensure the safety of the mold will be considered by stamping equipment. Undoubtedly, using a motion controller is the preferred solution, which requires the motion controller product to be able to change the stamping curve according to different workpiece processing requirements, and synchronize the feeding equipment and stamping equipment.

The action summary is as follows:

The system consists of a servo stamping machine and a matching feeding machine. At the same time as the stamping machine completes the stamping, the feeding system performs the feeding action. In the non working area of the stamping head, the feeding is completed, and the feeding system returns to the initial position, waiting for the stamping machine to perform stamping again, and cycling in sequence. This system requires that the feeding system action and the stamping machine action be coordinated and synchronized for control. This device requires one stamping shaft and six conveying shafts.

4. Summary

Today, with the increasing number of special machine tools and specialized machines, Mitsubishi's motion control and servo products have emerged in the machine tool industry, reflecting its advantages in synchronous high-speed and high-precision. Mitsubishi products will develop together with China's manufacturing and processing industries to create a better tomorrow.