Abstract: This paper briefly introduces the current development trend of CNC technology and equipment in the world and the current status of CNC equipment technology development and industrialization in China. Based on this, it discusses the importance of developing CNC technology and equipment in China, improving the informatization level of China's manufacturing industry, and enhancing its international competitiveness in the new environment of China's accession to the WTO and further deepening of opening up. Several views on developing CNC technology and equipment in China are proposed from both strategic and tactical perspectives. Keywords: CNC technology; CNC equipment; development trend; basic estimate; strategic considerations. The technological level and modernization degree of the equipment industry determine the level and modernization degree of the entire national economy. CNC technology and equipment are enabling technologies and the most basic equipment for developing emerging high-tech industries and cutting-edge industries (such as information technology and its industries, biotechnology and its industries, aviation, aerospace, and other defense industries). Marx once said, "The distinction between various economic epochs lies not in what is produced, but in how it is produced, and with what means of labor." Manufacturing technology and equipment are the most basic means of production for human production activities, and CNC technology is the core technology of today's advanced manufacturing technology and equipment. Today, manufacturing industries in various countries around the world widely adopt CNC technology to improve manufacturing capabilities and levels, and enhance their adaptability and competitiveness in a dynamic and ever-changing market. Furthermore, developed industrial countries around the world have listed CNC technology and CNC equipment as strategic national resources. They have not only taken major measures to develop their own CNC technology and industry, but also imposed blockade and restriction policies on my country in the field of "high-precision" CNC key technologies and equipment. In short, vigorously developing advanced manufacturing technology with CNC technology as its core has become an important way for developed countries around the world to accelerate economic development, improve their comprehensive national strength and national status. CNC technology is a technology that uses digital information to control mechanical motion and working processes. CNC equipment is a mechatronic product formed by the penetration of new technologies represented by CNC technology into traditional manufacturing industries and emerging manufacturing industries. It is also known as digital equipment. Its technology covers many fields: (1) mechanical manufacturing technology; (2) information processing, processing and transmission technology; (3) automatic control technology; (4) servo drive technology; (5) sensor technology; (6) software technology, etc. I. Development Trends of CNC Technology The application of CNC technology has not only brought revolutionary changes to traditional manufacturing, making manufacturing a symbol of industrialization, but also, with the continuous development of CNC technology and the expansion of its application fields, it plays an increasingly important role in the development of some key industries related to national economy and people's livelihood (IT, automobiles, light industry, medical care, etc.), because the digitalization of equipment required by these industries is a major trend in modern development. From the current global trends in the development of CNC technology and equipment, its main research hotspots are as follows: 1. New Trends in High-Speed ​​and High-Precision Machining Technology and Equipment. Efficiency and quality are the core of advanced manufacturing technology. High-speed and high-precision machining technology can greatly improve efficiency, enhance product quality and grade, shorten production cycles, and improve market competitiveness. Therefore, the Japan Advanced Technology Research Association has listed it as one of the five major modern manufacturing technologies, and the International Institute for Production Engineering (CIRP) has identified it as one of the central research directions for the 21st century. In the automotive industry, the production cycle for 300,000 vehicles per year is 40 seconds per vehicle, and multi-variety processing is one of the key issues that automotive equipment must address. In the aerospace industry, the parts being processed are mostly thin-walled and thin-ribbed, with poor rigidity, and are made of aluminum or aluminum alloys. These ribs and walls can only be processed under high cutting speeds and very low cutting forces. Recently, the method of "hollowing out" large integral aluminum alloy blanks has been adopted to manufacture large parts such as wings and fuselages, replacing the assembly of multiple parts through numerous rivets, screws, and other connection methods, thus improving the strength, rigidity, and reliability of the components. All of these have placed high demands on processing equipment, requiring high speed, high precision, and high flexibility. Judging from the EMO 2001 exhibition, high-speed machining centers can achieve feed rates of 80 m/min or even higher, and idle speeds can reach around 100 m/min. Currently, many automobile manufacturers worldwide, including Shanghai General Motors in my country, have adopted production lines composed of high-speed machining centers to partially replace combination machine tools. In terms of machining accuracy, over the past decade, the machining accuracy of ordinary CNC machine tools has improved from 10μm to 5μm, while that of precision machining centers has increased from 3-5μm to 1-1.5μm. Furthermore, ultra-precision machining accuracy has begun to enter the nanometer level (0.01μm). Regarding reliability, the MTBF value of foreign CNC devices has reached over 6000 hours, and the MTBF value of servo systems has reached over 30000 hours, demonstrating very high reliability. 2. Rapid Development of Five-Axis Linkage Machining and Composite Machining Machine Tools: Using five-axis linkage to machine three-dimensional curved surfaces allows for cutting with the optimal tool geometry, resulting in not only high surface finish but also significantly improved efficiency. It is generally believed that the efficiency of one 5-axis CNC machine tool is equivalent to that of two 3-axis CNC machine tools. In the aerospace industry, the parts processed are mostly thin-walled and thin-ribbed, with poor rigidity, and are made of aluminum or aluminum alloys. These ribs and walls can only be machined under high cutting speeds and very low cutting forces. Recently, the method of "hollowing out" large integral aluminum alloy blanks has been adopted to manufacture large parts such as wings and fuselages, replacing the assembly of multiple parts using numerous rivets, screws, and other connection methods, thus improving the strength, rigidity, and reliability of the components. These developments place high demands on machining equipment, requiring high speed, high precision, and high flexibility. Currently, the advent of electric spindles has greatly simplified the structure of composite spindle heads for 5-axis CNC machining, significantly reducing manufacturing difficulty and cost, and narrowing the price gap in CNC systems. This has promoted the development of 5-axis CNC machine tools with composite spindle heads and composite machining centers (including 5-face machining centers). 3. Intelligentization, openness, and networking have become the main trends in the development of contemporary CNC systems. CNC equipment in the 21st century will be systems with a certain degree of intelligence. This intelligence encompasses various aspects of the CNC system: intelligence aimed at improving machining efficiency and quality, such as adaptive control of the machining process and automatic generation of process parameters; intelligence aimed at improving drive performance and ease of use and connection, such as feedforward control, automatic calculation of motor parameters, automatic load identification and model selection, and self-tuning; intelligence aimed at simplifying programming and operation, such as intelligent automatic programming and intelligent human-machine interfaces; and intelligence in diagnostics and monitoring, facilitating system diagnosis and maintenance. To address the problems of the closed nature of traditional CNC systems and the industrial production of CNC application software, many countries are currently researching open CNC systems. Openness in CNC systems has become the future path for CNC systems. An open CNC system refers to a CNC system developed on a unified operating platform, accessible to machine tool manufacturers and end users. By modifying, adding, or tailoring structural objects (CNC functions), it can be serialized and easily integrated with user-specific applications and technical know-how, rapidly realizing open CNC systems of different varieties and levels, forming distinctive brand-name products. Currently, the core research focuses on the architecture specifications, communication specifications, configuration specifications, operating platforms, CNC system function libraries, and CNC system function software development tools of open CNC systems. Networked CNC equipment has been a new highlight at international machine tool exhibitions in recent years. The networking of CNC equipment will greatly meet the information integration needs of production lines, manufacturing systems, and manufacturing enterprises, and is also a fundamental unit for realizing new manufacturing models such as agile manufacturing, virtual enterprises, and global manufacturing. 4. Emphasis on the Establishment of New Technology Standards and Specifications 1) Regarding CNC System Design and Development Specifications: As mentioned earlier, open CNC systems offer better versatility, flexibility, adaptability, and scalability. Countries such as the United States, the European Community, and Japan have implemented strategic development plans and conducted research and formulation of open architecture CNC system specifications (OMAC, OSACA, OS2EC). The fact that the world's three largest economies have undertaken almost identical scientific plans and specification formulations in a short period foreshadows a new era of transformation in CNC technology. China also began researching and formulating its own ONC CNC system specification framework in 2000. 2) Regarding CNC Standards: CNC standards represent a trend in the informatization of manufacturing. For the 50 years since the birth of CNC technology, information exchange has been based on the ISO 6983 standard, which uses G and M codes to describe how machining is performed. Its essential characteristic is its focus on the machining process. Clearly, this is increasingly unable to meet the needs of the rapid development of modern CNC technology. Therefore, the international community is researching and developing a new CNC system standard, ISO 14649 (STEP2NC). Its aim is to provide a neutral mechanism independent of specific systems, capable of describing a unified data model throughout the entire product lifecycle, thereby achieving standardization of product information across the entire manufacturing process and even various industrial sectors. The emergence of STEP2NC may be a revolution in the field of CNC technology, having a profound impact on the development of CNC technology and the entire manufacturing industry. First, STEP2NC proposes a novel manufacturing concept. In traditional manufacturing, NC machining programs are concentrated on a single computer. Under the new standard, NC programs can be distributed across the internet, which is precisely the direction of open and networked development of CNC technology. Second, the STEP2NC CNC system can also significantly reduce machining drawings (approximately 75%), machining program compilation time (approximately 35%), and machining time (approximately 50%). II. Basic Estimates of the Development of CNC Technology and its Industry in China Looking back at the development of CNC technology in China over the past 50 years, especially after four five-year plans, the following achievements have been made overall. a. The foundation for the development of CNC technology has been laid, and modern CNC technology has been basically mastered. my country has now basically mastered the basic technologies of CNC systems, servo drives, CNC mainframes, special-purpose machines, and their supporting components. Most of these technologies are ready for commercial development, and some have already been commercialized and industrialized. b. A preliminary CNC industrial base has been formed. Based on the achievements in key research projects and the commercialization of some technologies, CNC system manufacturing plants with mass production capabilities, such as Huazhong CNC and Aerospace CNC, have been established. A number of servo system and servo motor manufacturing plants, such as Lanzhou Electric Machinery Plant and Huazhong CNC, as well as several CNC mainframe manufacturing plants, such as Beijing No. 1 Machine Tool Plant and Jinan No. 1 Machine Tool Plant, have also been established. These plants have basically formed my country's CNC industrial base. c. A basic team of CNC research, development, and management personnel has been established. Although significant progress has been made in the research, development, and industrialization of CNC technology, we must also be clearly aware that the current level of research and development of high-end CNC technology in my country, especially in industrialization, still lags far behind the actual needs of the country. Although my country's development speed is rapid from a longitudinal perspective, when compared horizontally (with foreign countries), there are gaps not only in technological level but also in the speed of development in some aspects, namely, the gap in technological level of some high-precision CNC equipment is widening. Internationally, the estimated levels of my country's CNC technology and industrialization are roughly as follows: a. In terms of technological level, it lags behind advanced foreign levels by approximately 10-15 years, with even greater gaps in high-precision technologies. b. In terms of industrialization level, market share is low, product coverage is small, and large-scale production has not yet been achieved; the level of specialized production of functional components and complete sets of equipment is low; appearance quality is relatively poor; reliability is not high, and commercialization is insufficient; domestically produced CNC systems have not yet established their own brand effect, resulting in insufficient user confidence. c. In terms of sustainable development capabilities, research and development and engineering capabilities for CNC technology are weak; the expansion of CNC technology application areas is not strong; and the research and formulation of relevant standards and specifications are lagging behind. The main reasons for the above gaps are analyzed as follows: a. Awareness. There is insufficient understanding of the arduous, complex, and long-term nature of the development of China's domestic CNC industry; insufficient estimation of difficulties such as market irregularities, foreign blockades and suppression, and institutional challenges; and insufficient analysis of China's CNC technology application level and capabilities. b. System aspects. There is more focus on the CNC industrialization issue from a technical perspective, and less comprehensive consideration of the CNC industrialization issue from a systemic and industrial chain perspective; a complete and high-quality supporting system, a sound training and service network, and other support systems have not been established. c. Mechanism aspects. Poor mechanisms lead to talent loss, which in turn restricts technological and technical route innovation, product innovation, and the effective implementation of plans, often resulting in ideal plans but difficult implementation. d. Technology aspects. Enterprises lack strong independent innovation capabilities in technology, and their engineering capabilities for core technologies are weak. Machine tool standards are outdated and at a low level, and research on new CNC system standards is insufficient. III. Strategic Thinking on the Development of CNC Technology and Industrialization in China 1. Strategic Considerations As a manufacturing powerhouse, China should try to accept the transfer of upstream rather than downstream industries in the global industrial transfer, that is, it should master advanced manufacturing core technologies; otherwise, in the new round of international industrial restructuring, China's manufacturing industry will become further "hollowed out." By sacrificing resources, the environment, and markets, we may only gain the status of an international "processing center" and "assembly center" in the new global economic landscape, rather than a manufacturing center with core technologies. This will severely impact the development of my country's modern manufacturing industry. We should prioritize CNC technology and industry issues from the perspective of national security strategy. Firstly, from a social security perspective, manufacturing employs the largest number of people in my country. Its development not only improves people's living standards but also alleviates employment pressure and ensures social stability. Secondly, from a national defense perspective, developed Western countries have designated high-precision CNC products as strategic national assets, imposing embargoes and restrictions on my country; the Toshiba incident and the Cox Report are prime examples. 2. Development Strategy: Starting from my country's basic national conditions, guided by national strategic needs and market demands of the national economy, and aiming to improve the comprehensive competitiveness and industrialization level of my country's manufacturing equipment industry, we should use a systematic approach to select key technologies that can lead the development and upgrading of my country's manufacturing equipment industry in the early 21st century, as well as supporting technologies and complementary technologies to support industrialization, as research and development content to achieve leapfrog development in the manufacturing equipment industry. Emphasizing market demand as the guiding principle, the focus is on CNC terminal products, with the development of the CNC industry driven by complete machines (such as widely used CNC lathes, milling machines, high-speed, high-precision, and high-performance CNC machine tools, typical digital machinery, and key equipment in key industries). The key is to address the reliability and production scale issues of CNC systems and related functional components (digital servo systems and motors, high-speed electric spindle systems, and accessories for new equipment). Without scale, there will be no highly reliable products; without scale, there will be no inexpensive and competitive products; and without scale, China's CNC equipment will ultimately struggle to gain a competitive edge. In the research and development of high-precision equipment, close collaboration between industry, academia, research, and end-users is crucial, aiming for products that are "produced, usable, and marketable," and implementing research and development according to national policy to address urgent national needs. In competitive CNC technology, innovation is emphasized, focusing on the research and development of technologies and products with independent intellectual property rights, laying the foundation for the sustainable development of my country's CNC industry, equipment manufacturing industry, and even the entire manufacturing industry.