Advantage Analysis Of Japanese Machinery And Tools Industry

In 2000, Japan's output of mechanical tools increased by 10.9% to 377 billion 211 million yen compared with 1999.

Among them, high-speed steel cutting tools, diamond tools, CBN tools have two digit growth; cemented carbide tools accounted for about 50% of the total output value of tools; in 2000, the output value of cemented carbide tools increased by 9.3%.

After entering the 2001, as the demand for semiconductor industry and machine tool industry turned weak, the tool industry was affected, and production and sales began to decline.

Among them, the demand for PCB bit for PCB is the most serious, and the yield reduction of high-speed steel tools is similar.

At present, the tool manufacturers are very concerned about the demand trend of the automotive industry. The industry is the main user of cutting tools. The change of demand is very obvious for the tool industry. At the same time, the pressure to reduce costs is very huge.

The global market for cutting tools is about 1 trillion and 100 billion yen, of which 400 billion yen is in the US and Europe, and 300 billion yen in Asia.

The annual growth rate of world tool demand is estimated to be 3% in 2003 and 2.6% in 2006. The expansion of users is mainly concentrated in the United States and Asia. Therefore, the Japanese tool industry will vigorously explore overseas markets.

In 2000, the proportion of Japanese tool exports reached 20% for the first time.

In order to adapt to this situation, Japanese tools enterprises have vigorously carried out reorganization activities such as merger or business cooperation.

In 1999, Toshiba Tungaloy and American KennametalHertel, Fuji Seiko and Germany Guhring company signed business cooperation agreements one after another.

In 2000, MITSUBISHI integrated materials company acquired Kobelco tools company and established MCC Kobelco tools company as a subsidiary of MITSUBISHI.

The acquisition and merger activities of these large manufacturers have formed a new supply system of cutting tools worldwide.

1. Speed up the pace of product development.

The automobile industry is a large demand for cutting tools. Its usage accounts for about 60% of the cutting tool products. The demand trend of the automobile industry is the focus of the tool industry.

In addition, in recent years, the booming IT industry has made rapid growth of the demand for small-diameter cutting tools. In the field of cutting, high precision, high speed and high efficiency machining have been paid unprecedented attention.

With the enhancement of people's environmental awareness, dry cutting technology has made great progress, and the development results of dry cutting tools are very significant.

The pace of development of new products based on coating and indexable structure is further accelerated.

The material of cutting tools has been mainly coated with cemented carbide in recent years, and the change is not obvious. Nevertheless, the coating technology itself has made great progress, and many excellent composite coatings such as heat resistance and wear resistance have appeared. The applications of TiC, TiN, TiCN and TiAlN coatings have been quite popular.

Coated tools have become the symbol of modern cutting tools, and the proportion of cutting tools has exceeded 50%.

As a tool for high speed machining, high hardness materials with excellent wear resistance must be selected. In such materials, ceramics are the most ideal varieties.

Ceramic tools have high hardness and excellent plastic deformation resistance under high temperature conditions, and are not easy to produce oxidation wear.

But its shortcomings are obvious, that is, the texture is crisp and easy to damage.

Recently, new ceramic varieties have been developed, and their shortcomings have been greatly reduced. For example, coated ceramics and FRC ceramics with SiC reinforced fibers have been put on the market. Now, new ceramic tools can be used for high-speed cutting of Ni based superalloys.

Sumitomo Electric Company has developed a new type of cutting tool material, that is, the special ceramic coating on the company CBN200/CBN80 (cubic boron nitride sintered body). This special coating increases the wear resistance of the material by 30%, and the tool life is greatly extended.

The new tool is mainly used for high speed machining of high hardness hardened steel and cast iron commonly used in the automotive industry. The company plans to achieve sales of 1 billion 200 million yen in two years.

Two. Developing ultrafine grain tool materials.

In order to achieve high-speed and high-precision machining, manufacturers are vigorously developing new tool materials sintered from fine grain metal powders.

As we all know, diamond is the highest hardness tool material, but diamond cutting tools will produce diffusion reaction with other carbon solid materials such as Fe, Co and Ni when cutting temperature exceeds 800 degrees.

Therefore, diamond tools are not suitable for cutting steel.

Cemented carbides and cermets should be used when machining high hardness materials. Especially, ultrafine grained cemented carbides (with a particle size of under 1 m) should be selected. This material has excellent hardness, toughness and reliability.

Because of its excellent performance, ultrafine grained carbide cutting tools will not produce abnormal damage such as blade breakage or breakage even if they are used in unstable cutting fields such as low speed or intermittent cutting.

Since the 90s of last century, the application of ultrafine grained carbide tools has been widely used, especially in high speed machining of difficult to machine materials.

After entering the new century, the properties of these materials have been further improved by coating treatment.

At present, these tools are widely used for cutting high hardness steel, stainless steel, Fe base and Ni based Co alloy.

The hardness of CBN cutter is only inferior to that of diamond, and its performance is superior to that of ceramic cutting tool. Therefore, it is suitable for cutting hardened steel, chilled cast iron and other high hardness materials and sintered structure, sintered stainless steel, Co based super heat resistant alloy and other materials.

With the enhancement of environmental awareness, dry cutting technology has attracted great attention.

The cutting tools used for dry cutting must have the following characteristics: in terms of thermal properties, coating materials with good heat resistance and heat dissipation are used; in terms of lubrication effect, coating materials with excellent lubricity are used; in the aspect of chip removal performance, tool shape for chip breaking and chip removal should be designed.

So far, tool manufacturers in Japan have developed various cutting tools for dry machining, such as the AQUA bit series of the Eryue company, the AC1000 coated blade of Sumitomo Corp, the ZX coated vertical milling cutter, the epoch vertical milling cutter of Hitachi tool Engineering Ltd and the MG coated blade.

Three. Thriving tool regrinding industry

In recent years, due to the rising price of raw materials, and in order to save resources, recycling technology such as carbide scrap blades and recycling resources has been very active, and tool manufacturers have also actively participated in this business.

MITSUBISHI composite materials, Sumitomo electricians, Toshiba Tungaloy, Dijet, Hitachi tools, Japan tungsten industry, Fuji die and other large cemented carbide tool manufacturers, in order to ensure stable supply of resources and reduce production costs, have adopted repeated measures for the used tools.

Among them, Hitachi tool Engineering Ltd is in Japan nationwide vigorously carry out scrap tool recycling business.

Narita branch is the main production base of cemented carbide tools of the company. Now, a new workshop is being built in the plant to reuse the scrap tools. It will merge with the original workshop in Osaka to form Hitachi's old tool reuse center.

Tool regrinding is one of the effective forms of reusing resources, and the regrinding industry has become increasingly scale.

According to statistics, there are 500~600 companies engaged in tool regrinding in Japan, including tool manufacturing plants, machinery processing plants and various commercial regrinding institutions.

Although the exact scale of the regrinding market is not clear at present, the demand for tool cost reduction is very high under the condition of economic depression. Therefore, the general trend of tool regrinding market is constantly expanding. Roughly estimated, its market size is between 20 billion and 30 billion yen.

Four. Enhance competitiveness in foreign markets.

While Japanese tools manufacturers have already met the domestic demand, they have launched a marketing strategy to vigorously enter the international market.

MITSUBISHI integrated materials company is working with MA Ford Motor Co to produce tools for mold and aircraft parts processing, hoping to enhance Mitsubishi Co's competitiveness in foreign markets.

At present, the company's sales ratio for aircraft manufacturing tools is 3%, and the proportion will increase to 10% in 3 years.

NMC Kobelco tool company is pushing its coated tool products to foreign markets through restructuring with MITSUBISHI composite materials.

Kobelco has set up new tooling and automotive parts machining departments (producing carbide end mills, drill bits) and gear cutting tools (with gear cutter as the center), and all kinds of cutters from plan to production are quickly determined by the Department, thus shortening the production week and improving sales efficiency.

Toshiba Tungaloy has introduced the IT and statistical quality management system within the company, resulting in a significant reduction in the rate of product failure. This kind of management method is very effective in reducing the production cost after the implementation of GE and Toshiba.

The medium term goal of Toshiba Co tool production is to vigorously develop and produce small part cutting tools (TAC tools) and IT, semiconductor machining integrated tools.

By 2002, the production capacity of PCB drill will be increased by 70%. The main production base is located in the mainland of China and Taiwan province. The monthly output is 6 million, and the output will be increased to 10 million by 2002.

The company expands the production base abroad to enhance the production and competitive strength of micro drill and mold cutting tools.

In February 2001, Kyocera Corp acquired the PCB, a large tool company in the United States, and vigorously expanded its PCB bit products to the rest of the world.

The company plans to occupy 40% of the PCB bit market in the US, occupying 10% of the Asian market (including Japan).

Fuji Seiko Corporation has established a joint venture in Dalian, China, Dalian Fuji Tools Co., Ltd.

In the new century, the company will strengthen the production capacity of carbide cutting tools in Dalian branch, and its monthly output value will increase from 25 million yen to 42 million yen.

In addition to supplying knives needed by local sewing machines, orders for Japanese joint ventures such as automobiles and motorcycles have also increased rapidly.

At the same time, the company also needs to sell some of its products to Japan to meet the growing demand of Japanese domestic users.

Five. Strengthen the production of carbide tools for die processing.

According to ISTA (InternationalSpecialToolingAssociation) statistics on the world's mold Market in 1990s, the United States was about 120 billion dollars, Europe more than 100 billion dollars, Japan more than 10 billion dollars.

The production cycle of mould high speed milling is only 1/3 of the traditional electrical machining method, so the demand for precision tools in mold industry is quite large.

The Japanese tool industry has always attached importance to the development and production of mould cutting tools.

Hitachi tool Engineering Ltd has been committed to the development and production of mould cutting tools for many years. In the future, we intend to further expand the production of such tools and strengthen quality management.

The company signed a business cooperation agreement with UNION company in the summer of 2000, and decided to jointly develop the PCB drill bit, so that the advantages of Hitachi tool Engineering Ltd in cemented carbide materials can be brought into full play. With the help of UNION's expertise in micro drill production, the company will achieve the best results.

UNION tools will enhance the production of carbide end mills for die processing.

The company's main product is PCB drill bit, its products in Japan are sold annually for 9 million 500 thousand, and the annual sales volume in foreign countries is 13 million, accounting for 50% of the domestic market and 40% of the world market.

At present, the demand for semiconductor related industries has declined, and the sales of PCB bits have dropped by 30%. On the contrary, the demand for mold cutting tools is increasing. UNION intends to expand the production of mold cutting tools to compensate for the drop in demand in the semiconductor industry.

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