In recent years, the mold industry in China has maintained a rapid development. According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, in 20 17, the sales revenue of China mold industry reached 266.342 billion yuan, up 2.31%year-on-year; It is estimated that in 20 18, the sales revenue of China mold industry will reach about 275.3 billion yuan.

With the rapid development of mold industry, mold technology has been widely used in various fields, and has made rapid progress, mainly manifested in the popularization of mold integrated manufacturing units and technologies, the extension of commercial Internet to molds and their industrial chains, the wide application of 3D printing in mold manufacturing, the intelligentization of molds, the emergence and optimization of lightweight new materials and large plastic molds, the maturity of large progressive die technology, and the refinement of mold standard parts.

Specifically, taking the popularization of integrated mold manufacturing units and technologies as an example, in recent years, in addition to the functions of automatic feeding, stamping, lamination measurement, thickness grouping, core assembly and product output, hinge assembly and connection, there have also been complex process combinations such as moving structure, in-mold heating, forging, local thermal (microstructure) control, in-mold welding, tapping, local injection, in-mold cutting and in-mold detection.

For another example, the application of 3D printing to mold cavity is a new trend of cavity mold development, and the metal addition and subtraction composite manufacturing technology is an important direction in the field of 3D printing. High-precision manufacturing of complex metal parts is realized by three-dimensional layer-by-layer superposition forming combined with high-speed milling and layer thickness profile thinning finishing. At present, the top three applications are industrial machinery, aerospace and automobiles, accounting for 20.0%, 16.6% and 13.8% of the market respectively.

Visible, from a technical point of view, China's mold design, processing and manufacturing technology is catching up with the international level. In addition, it can also reflect the rapid improvement of mold technology in China from the perspective of patents.

According to SooPAT's statistics, the number of patent applications related to molds in China has increased steadily since 2008. In 20 17, the number of patent applications reached 22,872, surpassing 20,000 for the first time, setting a new record. The number of patent applications decreased in 20 18, but it still exceeded 17000, reaching 17 146.

However, the technology patents owned by enterprises are scattered. From the perspective of patent applicants, among the top ten patent applicants, Hon Hai Precision ranks in the top two, with 347 patent applications and 337 patent applications respectively, accounting for less than 0.7% in total; Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Co., Ltd. applied for 309 applications, ranking third.

Mould technology is moving towards "five-oriented"

In the future, the development of mold technology will be in the direction of "five modernizations", that is, high precision, automation, intelligence, innovation and integration.

With the continuous learning in recent years, the mold industry in China has developed rapidly, and a number of companies specializing in high-precision mold manufacturing have been developed, realizing that dimensional accuracy is the most important factor in manufacturing high-precision, high-quality and high-tech products. There are two important factors to make high-precision molds: equipment and talents, but at present, China still has a certain distance from foreign countries in the most precise field. However, under the great attention of the country, it will definitely exceed in the near future.

Automation and intelligence are the guarantee to improve efficiency. With the popularization of all kinds of automation equipment (mainly robots) and the improvement of intelligence of standard parts (mainly hot runners) in molds, the efficiency of mold production is getting higher and higher, and it will develop towards a higher and better realm.

New molds need profound knowledge of design and manufacturing, which will become a resource for mold enterprises to build brands and a bargaining chip for better customers.

Integration is a high degree of integration of product development and mold. This trend is also inevitable, and this change can affect the change of manufacturing mode more than the replacement of all-round mold master by assembly line. To put it simply, mold designer and product research and development have merged into a new post, a brand-new post that can be responsible for the whole product from appearance to organization, to mold, to mold processing, mold production and product assembly, and has become the absolute core of manufacturing industry.

—— The above data and analysis are all from Foresight Industry Research Institute's Analysis Report on Development Prospect Forecast and Investment Strategic Planning of China Mould Industry.