What does smart manufacturing mean for tools?

What is intelligent manufacturing? According to Baidu Encyclopedia, Intelligent Manufacturing (IM) is a human-machine integrated intelligent system composed of intelligent machines and human experts. It can perform intelligent activities such as analysis and reasoning in the manufacturing process. , judgment, conception, and decision making. Through the cooperation of humans and intelligent machines, we will expand, extend and partially replace the mental work of human experts in the manufacturing process. It extends the concept of manufacturing automation to be flexible, intelligent and highly integrated.
What does smart manufacturing mean for tools?
What does smart manufacturing mean for tools? Intelligent manufacturing means that in the process of machining, intelligent machines and our human experts, such as machine tools, fixtures, workpieces, machining allowances, precision and surface quality requirements, cutting Various conditions such as liquid, analysis, reasoning, and judgment, so as to reasonably select the tool suitable for this machining task. The range of choices will cover all parts of the blade, the shank, the rivet, and the like, even including the blade screw and the screw. Various accessories such as lubricants and lubricants, and intelligently select the appropriate processing specifications such as the initial processing speed, determine which processing strategy to use, and even judge whether such processing parameters and processing strategies are reasonable, and know whether the chip removal is normal or not. Wear mode and approximate tool failure timing, timely change tool instructions to the machine or system to maintain the economical and safe operation of the cutting process.
To achieve such a smart manufacturing knife, it is not easy. Since there are many possibilities for machine tools, fixtures, workpieces (including materials and heat treatment, shape, rigidity), etc., the combination is ever-changing. The ideal processing conditions may be that many manufacturers provide their own cloud data for calculation. Analysis, but this method will involve the trade secrets of various manufacturers. At present, it is still difficult to achieve. Such cloud computing intelligence can only be hypothetical and delusional. According to the recommendation of foreign high-end tool manufacturers, the rigidity of the process system consisting of machine tool fixtures in the step of selecting the knife is definitely an important factor in it. The various elements of the tool itself must also be taken into consideration (specific tool selection methods and ideas can be found in the old Yang edited the "Full Graphic for CNC Turning Tools" and "Selective Graphic for CNC Milling Cutter" published by Machinery Industry Press, which challenged the intelligently selected knife selection knife.
We can look at how our experts now choose the knife. They often use the hand to stick to the machine tool to sense the vibration of the machine tool and listen to the sound of the cutting, observe the state of the chip, and make a basic judgment on the machining state in combination with other observed conditions. I think the future tool selection will use a similar method. With smart devices, just like the driverless cars that are being developed in many car factories, many sensors are installed on the machine to sense the running state of the machine when cutting, which helps us to select the knife more correctly. Of course, there are still many ways to go to this step.
But these are just peripheral conditions. For our tool industry, we need to know where our tools are suitable for and where we need to change our tools, what kind of machining parameters and machining strategies our tools use under various conditions (eg How to use the best precision, how to use the best life, how to use the best smoothness, etc.). These are the extremely lacking aspects of our domestic tool makers. What we lack is the concept of serving customers.
Many of our domestic companies are very lacking in service concepts. In the past few years, I had talked with the director of a domestic professional manufacturer of twist drills and discussed with him the problem of providing services to users. I did not expect that he asked me with a blank face and said that we mainly produce one type of twist drill. It seems that the user has never asked for any kind of service, what kind of service can we provide to customers? At the time, I felt helpless and lamented. I remember what I said at the time was that we could recommend some cutting parameters to the user? For example, how should the cutting steel be? How should the cutting cast iron be? How should the cutting blind hole be? How should the cutting through hole be? The drilling or drilling of the inclined surface should be How? This month I talked with another domestic tool manufacturer. I also mentioned that our products are relatively simple, especially the twist drills, which are almost 30 degrees of helix angle and 118 degree head angle. There is almost no difference between the thousand factories. Therefore, the price war will be quite fierce (it is said that the professional twist drill manufacturers mentioned in the previous year fell nearly half of the year-on-year output value). I would like to ask domestic manufacturers of twist drills and taps (both of which may be the most popular varieties of individual varieties). Can you make some changes to the most processed steel and cast iron parts, through holes and blind holes? The products are more suitable for the needs of the market? I think that these large-volume varieties, even if they are divided into several major application requirements, will still be a large-scale product, and the economics of manufacturing should not be problematic. With more varieties and specifications, and more professional and rich processing experience, we are more able to adapt to the needs of intelligent manufacturing.
In order to diversify the product, it is necessary to go to the customer more and understand the customer's reality and future processing needs, such as what kind of machine tool is used now, such as how rigid, the speed range, power, and the function of the machine tool ( For example, if the machine tool supports rigid tapping, etc.; for example, how the material of the workpiece, heat treatment, and the margin of most applications. In these cases, what tools are they using now, which ones are more suitable, why, and so on. Lao Yang thinks that we used to say that cutting databases are mainly done by research institutes and universities. However, such a database can cover a relatively small number of processing conditions based on funding and test conditions. Now if we introduce the big data concept, it is much easier for many users to upload their processing data to the processing database to find the appropriate processing parameters.
One of the words we heard in 2015 that is closely related to the tool is the industrial robot, which replaces the worker with the robot for manufacturing work. The figure is the change trend of China's industrial robots in recent years. It can be seen from the figure that China's industrial robots are growing rapidly. Although China's current industrial robots are welding, assembling and handling, there are quite a few parts for processing. The report revealed that domestic labor costs are rising, and industrial robots have formed a trend of replacing labor in many fields. Some large domestic manufacturing companies. For example, BYD and Foxconn have applied industrial robots to the production workshops and put them on a large scale. At the same time, we have seen that the development speed of China's industrial robot industry in the past two years is significantly faster than that of the downstream automobile industry. There are two main reasons: First, because the downstream investment in the automotive industry is very advanced, the corresponding industrial robot systems will be deployed. Second, due to the replacement and automation upgrade of some old production lines in the automotive industry (mainly the auto parts industry), the demand for industrial robots. In the future, as the automation of the electronics industry increases, the demand for industrial robots will increase significantly.
This trend will also place new demands on tooling requirements. We now have a large number of tool users changing the tool as determined by the workers' observations, either by sound, or by cutting sparks. But these criteria may not be so convenient for robots. For the robot, if it is necessary to judge on site, perhaps using the technical parameters such as the spindle torque and power of the machine tool, but the current technical progress, the most simple and easy is the timing forced tool change that some automobile engine factories are using. Under this measure, the production line will require that the tool will not break during the specified life, and the tool life beyond this life value will be considered a worthless redundant life. This technical measure requires our tool companies to focus on the convincing minimum life of the tool. In the past, some domestic tool companies must pay attention to the thinking mode that only pays attention to the average life expectancy and the importance of the dispersion of the life value.
Another problem that needs to be raised is that an automated factory that uses a large number of industrial robots will have a considerable number of operators leaving the existing jobs, and there must be operators with serious work and processing experience among them. If we can train these people to further master the service capabilities of the knife selection and enrich them into the on-site service team of the solution, we believe that our tools can be further integrated from manufacturing to manufacturing and manufacturing services. The transformation, which is also a direction of transformation and development, helps our manufacturing industry to achieve a transformation from a manufacturing power to a manufacturing power.