With the transformation and upgrading of China's equipment manufacturing industry, driven by both market demand and technological progress, the integrated application of industrial robots and CNC machine tools has developed rapidly in recent years, with constantly expanding application forms. This has brought new impetus to the current trend of machine tool intelligence and will surely play a beneficial role in promoting the transformation and upgrading of China's machine tool and tool industry.

In view of the current development status of robot R&D and its integrated application with machine tools, how should relevant enterprises establish effective organizational liaison mechanisms to strengthen communication and cooperation? What technical specifications and standards should be established for the integrated development of the two industries to fully achieve resource sharing, complementary advantages and form a joint force for industrial development?

The robot industry is ushering in a golden period of development. How to promote the integrated development of the industrial robot industry and the machine tool and tool industry, and how to realize the mutual integrated application of industrial robots and CNC machine tools have become important topics for the industrial upgrading of the modern equipment manufacturing industry.

Many positions in the machine tool manufacturing process mainly rely on workers' physical strength and skills, resulting in low production efficiency, high labor intensity, shortage of skilled workers, and difficulty in ensuring product stability and consistency. This has prompted the machine tool industry to increasingly adopt industrial robots and intelligent manufacturing technologies to transform traditional technological processes. In the past, expensive imported robots and production lines were mainly used in a few industries such as automobiles, with a relatively low application ratio in the equipment manufacturing industry such as the machine tool industry, which has largely restricted the improvement of the automation level of the domestic machine tool industry.

1 Current Status of the Two Industries

After the two five-year plans of the "11th Five-Year Plan" and "12th Five-Year Plan", through ten years of intensive cultivation, the development of China's CNC machine tool industry has entered a stage of mid-range large-scale industrialization and high-end small-batch production, and the overall industrial level basically has international competitiveness. As the control core of CNC machine tools, domestic CNC system manufacturers have mastered control technologies such as five-axis linkage, small line segment interpolation and dynamic error compensation, and also developed high-performance and high-power servo drive devices. Independent R&D has promoted technological innovation and progress, nurtured the embryonic form of the industrial robot industry and boosted industrial development.

At present, CNC system R&D enterprises, machine tool complete machine enterprises, automation application integrators and even real estate capital giants are all trying to enter the robot field, setting off an investment boom in the robot industry. However, it is worrying that policy over-guidance leading to "land enclosure for preferential policies", excessive industrial investment causing overcapacity, and lack of innovation-driven low-end homogeneous competition will all lead the robot industry into disorderly development. It is worth thinking about what kind of enterprises are most suitable for developing industrial robots and how to improve the overall quality of the robot industry. In general, enterprises with a foundation in CNC systems and the ability to mass-produce control systems, servo motors and servo control systems have certain advantages. The industrial promotion route of Japan's FANUC Corporation is a successful typical case worthy of learning and reference.

Several domestic CNC system enterprises have successively entered the industrial robot industry. Guangzhou CNC, which took the lead, has planned and developed the industrial robot industry since 2006 and has gone through 8 years. Relying on the experience accumulated in the production of its own controllers, servo drives and servo motor products, it has completed the fully independent development of a series of industrial robots. The products cover 3~200kg, with functions including handling, machine tool loading and unloading, welding, palletizing, gluing, grinding and polishing, cutting, spraying, sorting and assembly.

With the prominent problems such as rising labor costs, shortage of skilled talents, high-risk environmental protection and high-intensity operations, the participation of industrial robots in production and manufacturing has been widely recognized and continuously applied, becoming the focus of social attention. The government has taken this opportunity to promote industrial transformation and upgrading, and enterprises have used it to carry out technological transformation, change production methods and improve operational efficiency. However, China's robot ownership is not large, national brands are still under cultivation, and comprehensive competitiveness needs to be improved. Then, what kind of mode will the robot industry develop in? The author believes that at this stage, there is an urgent need for the coordinated development of the industrial chain consisting of robot complete machine enterprises, robot key component suppliers and robot integrators.

2 Integration Modes of Robots and CNC Machine Tools

In the field of CNC machine tool processing applications, the integrated application of domestic machine tool loading and unloading robots and CNC machine tools has developed at the forefront. From the perspective of industry application levels, great changes have also taken place:

1. Work Island: One-to-one linked machining, one-to-multi linked machining.
2. Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS): A flexible machining line based on network control, which uses a PLC control platform to network multiple robots, multiple CNC machine tools and their auxiliary equipment through industrial Ethernet bus, and carry out orderly automatic production according to the production rhythm.
3. Digital Workshop: With the help of CAD/CAM/CAPP/MES auxiliary production tools, logistics technology and sensing technology, it has functions such as production process monitoring, online fault real-time feedback, processing technology data management, tool information management, equipment maintenance data management and product information recording, meeting the needs of unmanned processing and realizing the production planning, operation coordination, integration and optimal operation of the processing system.
4. Smart Factory: With the help of intelligent workshop layout and ERP information management system, it will bring revolutionary changes to traditional production methods to the greatest extent. The database of the information management system can interface with various external information systems through gateways, connect the workshop to the ERP system, query the workshop production status, and realize the efficient allocation of enterprise resources; with its SMS platform and email platform, it can report information such as equipment failures and production progress to administrators in real time.

3 Approaches for the Integrated Development of Industrial Robots and CNC Machine Tools

3.1 In Terms of Processing and Manufacturing

There is great room for integrated development in aspects such as robots participating in the processing and manufacturing of machine tool structural parts to achieve automation, and special machine tools serving the precision processing of special robot reducers to improve processing technology quality and mass production efficiency. With the strategic cooperation between enterprises of both sides, robot enterprises can achieve the following goals by virtue of the manufacturing and process technology capabilities of machine tool manufacturers:

1. For robot body castings and reducer structural parts, jointly research and form batch precision manufacturing technology, improve the mass production capacity and process level of robots, overcome reliability and consistency technologies, and realize efficient, stable and precise rhythm production.
2. Relying on the integration capabilities of robot tooling, fixtures and machining production lines, and the extensive terminal customer channel resources of major machine tool factories, entrust the promotion and application of robots.
3. R&D industrial robots urgently needed for automated and flexible production such as loading and unloading of single machine tools and production lines, parts handling, scraping, chamfering, polishing, welding and spraying (powder) for machine tools. Machine tool enterprises and industrial robot enterprises jointly develop them to realize the automatic processing of complete machine parts and promote the improvement of the technical level of machine tool production and manufacturing.
4. The key components of the industrial robot mechanical body, such as turntables, large arms, boxes, support sleeves, small arms and wrist bodies, have high requirements for dimensional accuracy and geometric tolerances, as well as high requirements for machining equipment, tooling fixtures and measuring tools. At present, domestic processing equipment, assembly processes and precision testing are difficult to meet the requirements for the structural optimization and processing of key parts of robot reducers such as cycloidal gear shells, planetary pin gears, eccentric shafts and planet carriers. However, relying on domestic CNC machine tools and tooling equipment to complete related processing will help improve the design and processing level of China's high-end precision mechanical parts, and promote the application and development of domestic CNC devices and domestic CNC machine tools.

3.2 In Terms of Integrated Application

The realization of flexible machining lines for machining by machine tool loading and unloading robots will be a convenient and effective promotion method. The domestic ownership of CNC machine tools is about 2 million units. If robot enterprises take the lead in promoting the application of flexible machining lines for machine tool loading and unloading, there will be a huge market demand. It will also help boost machine tool manufacturing, robots and other mechanical parts towards automated, digital and networked production methods, realize process intelligent control and information management, improve production efficiency and product quality, enhance process management level, and even promote the overall improvement of the equipment manufacturing industry. For example, Guangzhou CNC has established strategic cooperative relations with machine tool manufacturers such as Dalian Machine Tool and Baoji Machine Tool, and jointly developed projects such as robot-specific processing machine tools, processing technology application and robot machining automatic flexible production application, promoting the mutual integration of both sides into their respective industrial applications.

There is a gap between domestic robots and the machine tool and tool industry and the international advanced level. Especially the industrial robot industry, as an emerging industry, started later than the domestic machine tool industry. Both manufacturing process level, control system, integrated application experience, technical standard maturity and professional talent pool have restricted the current development speed, and it is still necessary to seek progress through exploration. However, we believe that the in-depth integration of the two is of great significance for improving the comprehensive competitiveness of China's equipment manufacturing industry.