Ten years ago, China's machinery manufacturing industry suffered greatly from the dependence on imports for large castings and forgings: foreign companies took advantage of this opportunity to raise prices, causing prices to rise and delivery times to be delayed... Now, this passive situation of overall dependence on others has been basically reversed. Recently, the key project of the National Science and Technology Support Program, "Key Technologies and Equipment Development for Large Casting and Forging Manufacturing," passed the acceptance inspection, marking China's initial strategic technological breakthrough and industrial breakthrough in the large casting and forging industry.

For 10 years of continuous support, with a cumulative investment of over 1 billion yuan in scientific research funds, China has systematically conquered a number of key technologies in the manufacturing of large castings and forgings urgently needed in fields such as nuclear power, hydropower, thermal power, and marine diesel engines, forming a series of products and breaking foreign monopolies. More and more large castings and forgings in our country are being made in China!

Neck pain: Even if you buy blueprints, you can't create them

With the rapid development of energy and power equipment, the demand for large castings and forgings in China's economy is becoming increasingly urgent. However, compared with developed countries, China's large castings and forgings have significant differences in product variety, quality level, process level, manufacturing equipment, etc. Many products cannot be produced and are subject to human constraints.

For example, large marine crankshafts are the core components of marine diesel engines and have long relied on imports. Ship machinery and machinery shafts have become one of the bottlenecks restricting the rapid development of China's shipbuilding industry. For example, the key large castings and forgings required for nuclear power equipment in China, especially those for 1000MW nuclear power equipment, have never been produced and rely entirely on imports; More than 50% of the large castings and forgings required for 300MW thermal power units rely on imports, and 90% of the large castings and forgings required for 600MW and above thermal power units rely on imports.

Industry insiders say that China's machinery manufacturing industry is suffering from "import dependence" on large castings and forgings. Relying on imports results in the development of the entire industry being constrained by others: on the one hand, foreign suppliers have complete pricing power, and import prices remain high; On the other hand, the progress of major engineering construction in China is constrained by the delivery time of foreign large-scale cast and forged products.

"Even if our country purchases design drawings of some equipment through the introduction of technology, knowing the size and composition, we still cannot manufacture it. The core key manufacturing technology cannot be purchased," Li Dongru, Deputy Secretary General of the China Machinery Industry Federation and Director of the Science and Technology Work Department, told Science and Technology Daily reporters.

The urgent demand for national economic construction and major projects is in great contradiction to the low manufacturing capacity of our country. Industry experts have repeatedly called for joint research and targeted localization of special materials and specialized castings and forgings. Starting from the 15th Five Year Plan, the Ministry of Science and Technology has relied on the 863 Plan, research and development plan, and support plan in the field of advanced manufacturing to make a series of deployments for the research and development of domestically produced large castings and forgings, and organized national advantageous forces to carry out technical research and development of key technologies and equipment for the manufacturing of large castings and forgings.

Comprehensive breakthrough in production technology of large castings and forgings

The reporter learned that around the key technologies for the development and production of typical large castings and forgings, the science and technology department organizes domestic advantageous units to explore and tackle them in a planned and step-by-step manner from three levels: technical research, product formation, and industrial breakthrough. After nearly 10 years of accumulation and research, by the middle and later stages of the 11th Five Year Plan, China's large-scale casting and forging production technology has achieved comprehensive breakthroughs. A batch of representative key technologies for large-scale casting and forging have been conquered, and products have been formed, directly applied to China's large-scale engineering construction:

——We have developed the AP1000RPV key large-scale casting and forging manufacturing technology for large-scale advanced pressurized water reactor nuclear power plants, aiming to achieve international advanced level in nuclear power forging manufacturing technology in China, with some forging product indicators exceeding those of foreign countries. This breakthrough provides technical reserves for China to design and manufacture its own CAP1400 based on the introduction, digestion, and absorption of foreign third-generation nuclear power AP1000 technology.

——We have developed and manufactured key castings for the Three Gorges large hydropower units, and the product quality has reached or exceeded the level of similar foreign products.