The 19th China International Machine Tool Show (CIMT) was recently held in Beijing. With an exhibition area of 310,000 square meters, it not only set a new record for the event’s scale but also became the world’s largest professional machine tool exhibition in the past decade. Over 2,400 enterprises from 31 countries and regions gathered with their latest technologies and products, comprehensively showcasing the cutting-edge trends in the machine tool industry.
The scale upgrade reflects the strong market demand in China and the accelerated pace of innovation among Chinese machine tool enterprises. Mao Yufeng, President of the China Machine Tool & Tool Builders’ Association, stated that China, as the world’s largest manufacturer and consumer market for machine tools, is not only driving the technological upgrade and structural optimization of the domestic machine tool industry but also injecting strong momentum into the coordinated development of the global machine tool industry.
AI-Driven Intelligent Manufacturing Upgrade
Upon entering the exhibition halls, the crowds and the low hum of machinery signaled a series of impressive “industrial showcases.”
At the Huazhong Numerical Control (HNC) booth, a staff member’s command of “Begin intelligent programming” instantly activated the intelligent CNC system. Within seconds, the imported model was displayed on the screen, its response speed and output quality astonishing the audience.
This was the debut of the HNC-10 Intelligent CNC System, the world’s first next-generation intelligent CNC system integrating an AI chip and a large AI model. As the world’s first intelligent CNC system with self-learning capabilities, its release marks a major breakthrough for China in the field of high-end CNC systems, achieving a leap from being a technological “follower” to an innovative “leader.”
Chen Jihong, Chairman of HNC, told the reporter, “We have endowed this system with self-learning capabilities and innovatively built a technical architecture of ‘one intelligent base, two digital threads, and three functional subsystems,’ creating a new paradigm for the advanced stage of intelligent manufacturing.” Currently, the system already possesses intelligent decision-making capabilities equivalent to an engineer with 2 to 3 years of work experience and can continuously evolve through data training. Its open platform supports the localized deployment of enterprise-specific small models, effectively ensuring data security.
HNC’s breakthrough in intelligent systems is not an isolated case. The deep integration of AI technology and the machine tool industry became a key focus at this exhibition. The latest products launched by numerous domestic machine tool enterprises vividly demonstrated the fruitful achievements in the upgrade from traditional manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing.
“The next 10 years are a critical period for the development of intelligent CNC machine tools, a typical equipment of the new generation of intelligent manufacturing,” said Zhou Ji, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Director of the National Advisory Committee for Building a Strong Manufacturing Country. Promoting new industrialization through AI technology has become the core technical path for innovation and development in the manufacturing industry, and the new generation of intelligent manufacturing is a key link on this path.