The development trend of domestic CNC machine tools

As the "mother machine" of high-end equipment manufacturing, the "Made in China 2025" initiative has elevated the strategic significance of CNC machine tools to a new level. However, data shows that the market share of domestically produced CNC systems in high-end CNC machine tools is only 5%. Analysts believe that the brand promotion of domestically manufactured CNC machine tools is the bottleneck of the current manufacturing industry, and once this is overcome, imports are likely to be replaced.

The CNC system for machine tools originated in the United Kingdom in the 1950s. In the mid-to-late 1970s, Japanese companies popularized its widespread adoption. Historically, the hydraulic control systems of CNC machine tools have undergone three major transformations: rectifier tubes, bipolar transistors, and integrated circuits. Due to China's significant lag behind developed countries in the computer and integrated circuit industries, China's CNC system technology also fell far behind. After China's reform and opening up, the CNC machine tool industry chain experienced a arduous development process, including technology introduction during the "Sixth Five-Year Plan" period, technology digestion during the "Seventh Five-Year Plan" period, independent technology development and design during the "Eighth Five-Year Plan" period, and the industrial development of mid-to-low-end CNC machining technology and the overcoming of obstacles in high-end CNC systems during the "Ninth Five-Year Plan" to the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" period.

As a key indicator for measuring the development level of equipment manufacturing, CNC machining technology has become a strategic key technology. High-end CNC systems and machine tool equipment with five-axis or more linkage are regarded as international strategic materials and are subject to strict export restrictions by European and American countries. China has previously introduced foreign CNC system technologies, but the other party adopted methods such as "selling high-profit products - transferring outdated technologies - establishing joint venture factories". To this day, high-end CNC machine tools in China are still dominated by foreign CNC systems.

The vision of first absorbing foreign technology and then pursuing "independent development and design" has not been realized. Looking at the data from 2010, when China's machine tool production reached its peak, low-end, economical machine tools accounted for 60% of the market, with 95% of them using domestic CNC systems; mid-range basic machine tools accounted for 38%, with domestic CNC systems accounting for 20%; and high-end machine tools accounted for 2%, with domestic high-end CNC systems accounting for only 2%.