China's machining center market has a bright future

　　Machining center is a kind of NC machine tool for multi process compound machining, and it is developing in the direction of high speed, high precision and 5-axis linkage. Because of its high production efficiency, good flexibility, multi-purpose and easy to process complex curve and curved surface parts, it has become the main processing equipment of military and civil machinery industry in industrial developed countries.

　　A country's processing center ownership, consumption and overall technical level are closely related to the processing and manufacturing technology level of the national machinery industry. After entering the 21st century, the consumption of China's machining centers has increased rapidly with the large-scale technological transformation of the military and civil machinery industry. For example, in 2001, the consumption of China's machining centers was only 2662 (including 2290 imported), while in the same year, the consumption of America, Japan and Germany was 11505, 6090 and 5291 respectively. By 2005, the consumption of China's processing centers had soared to about 13200 units (estimated value, production data of processing centers have not been published), of which 10343 units were imported. In 2005, the consumption of processing centers was 4.96 times that of 2001, with an average annual growth rate of 49.2%, surpassing the United States, Japan and Germany, becoming the country with the largest number of consumer processing centers in the world.

　　Medium grade products are the main products, and the proportion of high-end products is nearly 1 / 5

　　According to the survey conducted by mechanical workers magazine and other units, the results from nearly 600 valid questionnaires from key users show that the application of machine tools in machining centers has spread to 26 industries in China, including 24% in automobile, motorcycle and parts manufacturing industry, 18% in aerospace and military industry, 11% in machine tool industry, 8% in mold industry and 4% in light industry machinery industry. Among the machining centers owned by these enterprises, although the popular vertical and horizontal machining centers still account for the majority, high-end machining centers such as multi axis linkage, high-speed and large-scale precision also account for a certain proportion. For example, among the nearly 600 users surveyed, 24% have 5-axis linkage machining centers. This shows that although the processing centers in China are mainly popular medium-sized machines, the proportion of high-end machines in the consumption is estimated to be 15% to 20%.

　　The market scale has considerable development space

　　Most of the processing centers consumed in China rely on imports (the import volume accounted for more than 70% of the consumption in 2005), with an import value of 1.297 billion US dollars, ranking the first among all kinds of machine tool imports, mainly from Japan, Taiwan, Germany and South Korea. In the first half of 2006, China imported 5511 processing centers with a value of 688 million US dollars, increasing by 20% and 11% respectively over the same period of the same period of last year, and still maintained a double-digit growth, indicating that there is still room for growth in the scale of China's processing center market.