The lag in the development of new materials has severely affected the development of high-precision mechanical part processing. All sectors of society have become aware of this issue. Currently, there is a lack of top-level design and coordination in China's new material industry, with a phenomenon of low-level repetitive construction; precision mechanical part processing factories lack original innovation capabilities, and the research and support capabilities for common technology development are not strong, with a low self-sufficiency rate for high-end products; investment in new materials is scattered, and the mechanical part processing industry chain is not complete, with precision part processing enterprises, as the main body of development, generally being small in scale and having a low conversion rate.
How to build a new material innovation system with strong research and development capabilities and high industrial integration has also been put on the agenda. The development of high-end mechanical part processing requires the acceleration of the new material industry, which is the foundation. The development of new materials should focus on both innovation and application; precision mechanical part processing factories need to strengthen original research, accelerate the research and development of new materials and their preparation and production technologies, and must initiate new mechanisms and system explorations. Material technology has characteristics such as long chains and cross-scales, and it often takes a long process for new materials to go from research and development to mature application. Materials must continuously improve their performance in applications; otherwise, process technologies cannot be iteratively optimized, and some key data cannot be accumulated.
However, in the existing material research and development institutions in China, university-related research focuses more on free exploration and lacks systematicness; academic research institutes focus on discipline orientation and are not well integrated with the mechanical part processing industry; large mechanical part processing enterprise research institutions focus on the rapid improvement of CNC part processing technology, lacking originality, and are difficult to meet the demands of China's mechanical part processing manufacturing industry and material industry for new material technology in the rapid development over the years.
At present, the Jiangsu Industrial Technology Research Institute has taken the lead in the field of material processing for mechanical parts. Relying on the national-level research and development platform, it has established six research institutes and jointly established eight research institutes with local governments and precision mechanical part processing teams, covering advanced metal materials, high-temperature alloy materials, carbon fiber and composite materials, membrane materials, functional fiber materials, and other cutting-edge fields of precision part processing.
It is reported that the biggest characteristic of the shared cooperation in mechanical part processing is its flexible mechanism and open sharing. It takes the frontier of the material industry as the core to lead the research and development and application of technology and key common technology in mechanical part processing. It strengthens applied basic research and increases the supply of major key technologies at the source. It does not compete with universities for academic reputation nor with mechanical part processing enterprises for product profits. With the start of the first phase of construction, it has overcome a batch of frontier and common key technologies in the new material industry, such as high-strength and high-modulus carbon fiber, the fifth generation of single-crystal high-temperature alloy, and new-type hydrogen storage materials. It has preliminarily formed an innovative mechanical part processing industrial cluster with great development potential and strong driving effect in the fields of advanced metal materials, carbon fiber and its composite materials, membrane materials, and polymer materials.
