Knives: the "teeth" of the mother of industry, an important link towards high-end manufacturing

       The development of tool manufacturing level is of great significance to the development of the machine tool industry. Machining accounts for about 90% of the entire machining workload and is the most basic link in the machinery manufacturing industry. As the teeth of the industrial mother machine, the tool is one of the most important core components of various machine tools. Although the tool cost only accounts for 1% to 5% of the production cost of a single part, the quality of the tool performance will directly restrict the development of the machine tool in the direction of high speed, high precision and high efficiency. As the downstream of the new material industry and the upstream of the new equipment industry, the tool manufacturing industry is also the key layout area for the country to implement the strategy of manufacturing a strong country. Modern cutting tools featuring high precision, high reliability and high efficiency are more and more initiated in the modern manufacturing system. irreplaceable key role.



Tool production generally adopts a general production line. The production process from front to back is batching - pressing forming - sintering forming - deep processing - coating - packaging and other links. International first-tier manufacturers will also participate in the recycling of waste blades. The market price is also deeply bound to customers. The number of cemented carbide inserts recycled by Sandvik in the past ten years has accounted for 40% of sales.



According to the level, the current domestic tool market can be divided into three levels: high-end, medium-high-end and low-end. The classification of tool grades is mainly based on the performance and quality of the tools. High-end tool products have good stability, high processing efficiency, high precision and long life.



1) High-end cutting tools: The domestic market share is about 20%, and the suppliers are mainly European and American brands. Typical enterprises include Sandvik, Kennametal, Iscar, etc. The domestic brands China Tungsten High-tech (Zhuzhou Diamond), Xiamen Tungsten ( Xiamen Jinlu) is making efforts to the high-end tool market;



2) Mid-to-high-end cutting tools: The domestic market share is about 30%, and the suppliers are mainly Japanese and Korean brands, including Japan’s Mitsubishi Composite Materials, Kyocera, South Korea’s Teguk and Chloe, and China’s China Tungsten High-tech (Zhuzhou Diamond), Xiamen Tungsten Industry (Xiamen Jinlu), Huarui Precision, Oukeyi, Wald, Hengfeng Tools, etc.;



3) Low-end cutting tools: The domestic market share is about 50%, and the suppliers are mainly small domestic enterprises. These enterprises are small in scale, with average product performance and serious homogeneity.



Tool manufacturing focuses on four core technologies. According to the prospectus of Huarui Precision, the tool manufacturing has high technical barriers, and the barriers are concentrated in the design and process links, mainly including four core technologies: matrix material, groove structure, precision molding and coating process. In the manufacturing process, the non-standard customized equipment in the production equipment adopts domestic equipment, while the imported equipment used is standardized equipment, and domestic equipment can be replaced, and there is no import dependence problem.



The tool industry chain has a clear structure. The industrial chain of the tool industry can be mainly divided into upstream basic material production, midstream tool manufacturing and downstream terminal applications, of which the midstream is the core link. The upstream basic materials mainly include tool steel, cemented carbide, ceramics, and superhard materials (including synthetic diamond PCD and cubic boron nitride CBN). The midstream tool manufacturing is mainly divided into international manufacturers and domestic manufacturers. The downstream terminal applications are widely distributed. Industry segments are involved.



The performance of the tool is closely related to the tool material. At present, the materials used for tool manufacturing mainly include high-speed tool steel, cemented carbide, ceramics and superhard materials (cubic boron nitride CBN and synthetic diamond PCD), of which cemented carbide materials account for more than 60% of the global share and more than 50%.



Machine tool tools are typical industrial consumables. The global market scale is at the level of 200 billion, and it grows steadily every year. The Chinese market scale is at the level of 40 billion, which is closely related to the development of the manufacturing industry. From 2016 to 2018, the scale of my country's cutting tool market has grown significantly and rapidly. In 2018, the total consumption of cutting tools reached 42.1 billion yuan, which is the highest point in history. In 2019, affected by the intensification of Sino-US trade friction and the continuous decline of downstream industries such as automobiles, my country's tool consumption has declined. In 2021, with the rapid recovery of the manufacturing industry and the growth of downstream demand, the market size is expected to continue the trend of rising volume and price in 2020.