The localization of plastic machinery brings great opportunities and multiple benefits

    According to statistics, there are nearly 700 major plastic machinery manufacturing enterprises in China, of which there are about 250 professional manufacturing enterprises that can provide plastic molding equipment, employing about 60,000 people. In 2005, the output value of China's plastic machinery industry was about 20 billion yuan, while the domestic market demand was about 30 billion yuan during the same period, of which some departmental equipment also needed to rely on imports. The booming trend of China's plastics industry and the strong domestic demand capacity for the development of domestic plastic machinery industry has brought great opportunities, but it is not difficult to find that this also opens the market for the import of plastic machinery products, and the competitiveness of large foreign companies that have been in the upper hand in high-end mechanical products is indeed strong.

    China's plastic machinery production base is mainly concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, two economically developed areas, these two regions have formed a complete plastic machinery industry chain. However, because of the large, precision and high-speed equipment, there are still many shortcomings in domestic products, in recent years, the number of plastic machinery imported by China is also growing rapidly, and the annual import of various plastic machines is tens of thousands of sets, about twice the total output value of domestic plastic machinery. Especially in some product areas, import equipment and some high quality production lines abroad still occupy a dominant position. "China's plastic machinery industry should increase investment in the technical content of equipment, energy saving and consumption reduction and the automation degree of promotion equipment, in addition, with the acceleration of the localization process of large granulation units, domestic plastic machine manufacturers can take this opportunity to promote product functions and automation." At the same time, as many manufacturers in the plastic processing industry to achieve profits, automation products will be more used in new equipment and production lines." Wu Daming, director of the plastic machinery and plastic Engineering Research Institute of Beijing University of Chemical Technology, said in an interview with this reporter.

    The development trend of plastic machinery industry is gradually becoming clear

    In China, in addition to a small number of large state-owned plastic enterprise groups and department-owned, joint ventures and private plastic products enterprises have improved equipment, the vast majority of plastic processing enterprises in China are still based on domestic equipment. About 20% of the equipment in use is high energy consumption, low capacity equipment, should be eliminated, but for various reasons are still in use. For the above phenomenon, Director Wu has his own views, he said: "Although China's plastic machinery and equipment production has increased significantly than in the past, the technical level has also made a certain degree of progress, which shows the strong development momentum of China's plastic machinery industry." However, on behalf of the level of plastic processing technology, the high-end plastic machinery and equipment represented by large and precise (including micro) is still dominated by foreign equipment, and the expensive price of import machinery and equipment makes small enterprises in large sectors daunting.

    Although the policy orientation and the domestic plastic machinery industry specific demand situation determines the basic development trend of plastic machinery products, but because the level of the domestic industry is uneven, the overall development is greatly restricted. "The development trend of plastic machinery in China can be summarized into three directions, namely large-scale, precision and high-speed." In fact, these characteristics have been put forward a few years ago, and in recent years, the development trend of the plastic machine industry in these three directions has become clear." Director Wu introduced to reporters.

    At present, there is still a big gap between domestic manufacturers in high-speed and precision equipment and the world to improve the level of predecessors. There is also a big gap in real-time process and product parameter monitoring, as well as improving the adoption of older control technologies. Improve the previous high-precision online testing instruments mainly rely on the import, domestic products are few, and the function can not be compared with the import products. On the whole, China's precision extrusion molding equipment is still in its infancy, and there is a lot of room for development. Director Wu said in the introduction: "In some high-precision products market, such as optical fiber, medical catheter, automotive fuel pipe as the representative of a series of high-precision products market demand is increasing, the precision extrusion molding equipment and technology requirements are also improving, our institute is also assisting some enterprises to overcome technical difficulties." He also pointed out that the realization of high-speed extrusion molding equipment can reduce the production cost, which is more significant in the blowing film unit, pipe extrusion unit and other aspects. As a major technical equipment required for key construction services, the large extruded granulation unit, one of the three major hub equipment supporting large-scale ethylene projects, has long relied on the entrance, so it is necessary to speed up the localization process and meet the development needs of the petrochemical industry.

    Localization of large units brings multiple benefits

    In Europe, automation products and related technologies are widely used in the plastic machinery industry. From the robots used in the production line to the visual system to check the quality of the product, from the high-precision sensors applied in the automatic forming system to the remote monitoring, diagnosis and control automation technology that has been widely used in the extrusion production line, this is establishing a brand image for European plastic processing machinery manufacturers with high output, fewer defective products, timely delivery and long product life. Compared with the advanced technology adopted abroad, domestic manufacturers are relatively old-fashioned. "Domestic mechanical products will use some conventional automation products, such as PLC instead of traditional instruments, the use of servo systems in the case of high control accuracy requirements, etc., but because most of China's large departments of plastic machine manufacturing enterprises are still small production lines, so some too complex automation technology is not suitable for application in these occasions." Director Wu explained.

    So large, highly integrated units are really the "soft underbelly" of domestic enterprises? It is understood that China has made a number of 70,000 tons/year plastic granulator through cooperation with foreign countries. Compared with foreign products, China's large plastic granulation machine manufacturing is still vacant, completely rely on the import, but also to bear the high price. Director Wu introduced: "Large extrusion granulation unit is the 'eleventh Five-Year' major technical equipment research project, is expected to achieve an annual output of 200,000 tons of large granulation unit localization work this year, which will greatly promote the development of the entire rubber machinery industry, will also make the current mechanical products are mostly in the low-end operation situation has been greatly improved."

    The large plastic granulation machine has an intelligent system integrating high function, high utilization rate of raw materials, low energy consumption and low pollution. Among them, the widely used to improve the predecessor control technology, the process parameters of the entire granulation process, such as melt pressure and temperature, the temperature of each section of the fuselage, the ratio of various raw materials, the current and voltage of the motor and other parameters are tested online, and the closed-loop control is adopted.