How will China's future tool technology and market develop? This is a question of different opinions from different people and different opinions from wise people. In my opinion, the development of our cutting tools will first make great efforts to improve efficiency. Because improving the processing efficiency will become an important consideration for tool users.

To some extent, the requirements of tool users for improving processing efficiency are based on the requirements of social development and international environmental development. From 2000 to 2010, the average wages of workers in Wuxi, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou increased by 500%, 300%, 320% and 290%, respectively. The rise in labor costs is obvious. The increase of labor cost is directly proportional to the cost of products, which will lead to the decline of product competitiveness. Another aspect is the appreciation of our RMB. From 2005 to early 2012, the exchange rate between RMB and US dollar rose from about 1:8.1 to 1:6.3, with an appreciation of nearly 30%. The Euro rose from the highest of 1:11 in 2008 to about 1:8.3 in early 2012, with an appreciation of about 32.5. The appreciation of RMB increases the price of Chinese export products settled in local currency abroad, while the RMB settlement price of imported products decreases.

This brings extra competitive pressure to both domestic export enterprises and industries with more imported foreign products. If these negative effects are to be diluted, improving the processing efficiency will become a solution for tool users. Because once the efficiency increases, the number of products produced per unit time increases, the cost of equipment, manpower and management allocated to a single product will be reduced, and the total cost of the product will be greatly reduced. In order to improve the efficiency of cutting tool processing, efforts should be made in both the manufacturing technology and the application technology of cutting tools. This article only elaborates its own analysis from the cutting tool manufacturing technology.

Tool Manufacturing Technology

In the manufacturing technology of cutting tools, the first is the material technology of cutting tools. The material technology of cutting tools is expected to develop in two directions: the new type of materials and the high performance of the original materials.

At the 2011 European Machine Tool Exhibition, the "Rolling Cutting King" of German Blue Metalworking is an example of a new type of material. The material of this hob is neither high speed steel nor cemented carbide. Its chemical composition is shown in Table 1. According to Blue Chi, because there is no carbon in the new material, "Rolling Cutting King" no longer hardens by means of metal alloys, but by aging hardening to improve the wear resistance of materials, which is a new material technology. The cutting speed of hobs manufactured with this material technology can be increased by more than 50% compared with traditional high speed steel hobs, and even 30% compared with powder metallurgy high speed steel hobs.

At present, the main trend of high performance materials is to refine particles and increase some trace elements to improve the properties of materials. Many of us have heard about the magic of nano-materials. Although the nano-technology of tool materials seems to be still in the laboratory stage rather than in the commercial application, I believe that in the next 30 years, nano-technology tool materials will gradually enter the application stage.
Nanomaterials generally refer to materials whose particle size is less than 100 nm, i.e. less than 0.1 um. According to the author's information, as far as the whole cemented carbide and indexable inserts are concerned, micro-drills and micro-milling cutters with diameters less than 0.1 mm will use sub-nano materials with particle sizes of about 0.7 micron, while other cutting tool materials can be called micro-particles if they can use 1?1.3 micron particles of cemented carbide. Generally speaking, the strength of fine-grained cemented carbides is much higher than that of coarse-grained cemented carbides, which is helpful to improve the performance of cutting tools. Table 2 is a comparison of the properties of two monolithic cemented carbides in Rebecca, Germany. It can be seen from the comparison that the strength of 0.5-micron cemented carbides is 30% higher than that of 2-micron cemented carbides. It is expected that the proportion of fine and ultra-fine cemented carbides will be higher and higher in the next 30 years. Similarly, within the scope of high-speed steel, fine-grained powder metallurgical high-speed steel will gradually replace needle martensite ordinary high-speed steel.