Market Status and Gap Analysis of Domestic Robot Reducer

[Market Analysis of China Intelligent Manufacturing Network] As one of the essential parts of industrial robots, precision reducers used in the robot industry can be divided into RV reducers, harmonic reducers and SPINEA reducers in the world. The market sales volume of the three reducers accounts for about 40%, 40% and 20%.

Potential Market Size of Reducer in China

According to industry experts and association data research, in the global scope, the robot industry application of precision reducer can be divided into RV reducer, harmonic reducer and SPINEA reducer, the market sales volume of the three accounted for about 40%, 40%, 20%. Among them, RV reducer and harmonic reducer are the most mainstream precision reducer of industrial robots.

RV reducer: large transmission ratio, high transmission efficiency, high motion accuracy, small return difference, low vibration, large rigidity and high reliability. In the articulated robot, the RV reducer is generally placed at the position of heavy load such as the base, the big arm, and the shoulder.

Harmonic reducer: large transmission ratio, small outline, small number of parts and high transmission efficiency. In articulated robots, the harmonic reducer is generally placed on the forearm, wrist or hand.

It is estimated that China will need to consume 190000 robots per year by 2020, with a domestic market share of 50%(95000) by 2020 and over 70% by 2025. In the next five years, this will provide Chinese manufacturers with a potential market of more than $74 billion billion for robots and related services. With the rapid development of industrial robot application market in China, the market demand scale of industrial robot reducer is also increasing. In general, the number of reducers required for an industrial robot is 4-6. With the development of industrial robots in the future, CIC Consulting Industry Research Center predicts that the market size of China's industrial robot reducer will exceed 4 billion yuan by 2020, with a compound growth rate of about 30% in the next five years.

According to industry sources, the purchase price of a precision reducer for the four major international giants is 30000 yuan to 50000 yuan, which is sold to customers with good domestic relations for about 70000 yuan and ordinary customers with ordinary relations for about 120000 yuan. The cost of purchasing precision reducers by domestic enterprises is more than twice as expensive as that of international giants, which shows how big the difference in profits is.

Reducer in the domestic market situation

For a long time, the precision reducer technology for robots has been controlled by the United States, Germany, Japan, the Czech Republic and other countries. Among them, 75% of the world's precision reducer market is occupied by Japan's Hamernako and Nabotsk. Nabotsk produces RV reducers, accounting for about 60% of the total, and Hamernako produces harmonic reducers, accounting for about 15% of the total.

In terms of cost, the current cost composition of the global robot industry is about 35% reducer, about 20% servo motor, about 15% control system, machining body may only account for about 15%, and other parts are mainly applications. It can be seen that the reducer is a key factor restricting the development of the robot industry. At present, the core technology of Chinese robots is still lack of overall breakthrough. As a result, the robot industry in the field of high-end equipment manufacturing in China has developed slowly and can only rely on imported RV reducers.

The high proportion of key components imported will lead to the high cost of domestic manufacturing robots. In particular, the price of domestic enterprises to buy reducer is nearly several times the price of foreign enterprises. In this way, it is difficult for domestic robots to form a price advantage. Only with an annual output of 500-1000 units can they have a certain scale effect. Therefore, if China wants to form the industrialization of robots, get rid of the constraints of foreign robot companies, and win autonomy in the field of robots, it must accelerate the localization of reducers on the agenda.

At present, the development of reducer still has the bottleneck of capacity expansion, involving problems such as toll gates, management, technology, etc. Japan's reducer has delayed the supply cycle. The longest supply cycle has reached more than 6 months. The supply cycle of Nabotsk in Japan has been extended from the original 2-3 months to the current 4-6 months. The production capacity of domestic reducer cannot be doubled in a short time, unable to meet the expanding market demand. Therefore, the expansion of production is not only a problem faced by domestic reducers, but also one of the problems faced by Japanese reducers.

Gap of domestic RV reducer

Technology gap of RV reducer

The technology required for RV reducers is very high. The core difficulty lies in the close cooperation of various processes.

Tooth surface heat treatment, which is the input condition, the stress residue under the rough machining accuracy, the stiffness strength of the surface should be consistent during heat treatment;

Processing accuracy, heat treatment surface outside hard inside soft, processing removal amount is different, resulting in the performance of the exposed part of the variance is the key;

Symmetry of parts, different parts should be consistent at different angles;

Group technology: how to cooperate with each other;

Assembly accuracy: such high precision assembly;

The result of the total distribution of the above tolerances is wear and life.

Power aspect

Simulation difficulties: after the modeling of multi-body dynamics simulation of dynamics, it is possible to know the situation of each order of vibration;

Non-linear characteristics, resulting in a huge difference, once there is a resonance point near the working point, it is affected;

Coupling with system integration, the operating point (rated speed) of the integrated robot is used as the excitation frequency, which will cause component damage. The operating range of the system is often continuous speed regulation. There is always one axis of the 6-axis robot that may be near the rated point by 20%, unless well designed and implemented;

Product parameters fluctuate greatly. For such a precisely matched system, as long as the clearance/interference fit deviates a little bit, the contact stiffness/meshing stiffness will be several times worse. The huge change of stiffness matrix causes the fluctuation of natural frequency.

Lifetime optimization and iteration aspects

A stable car and a vibrating car, life may be many times worse, think about also know where the life went;

Some materials cannot be found without going through the whole life cycle test of the real environment. Therefore, there must be a round of problems and then iterative design process.

At present, the problem facing robots seems to be that 60% of the price cannot make things and 90% of the price can make things with 30% of the life span. In fact, the life span itself is a sign of the level of the machinery industry.

RV reducer industry there are management problems

The reference object of the domestic reducer has always been a certain model of the horizontal foreign imported reducer. I have never heard that a certain reducer is specially customized for a certain domestic robot. An industrial robot is not only the reducer, but more importantly, the combination with the servo system and the motion control system can achieve high precision and high stability. The technologies of each company are different, I have never heard of two foreign robots saying that their reducers can be used in common with others. Domestic reducer reference object is how the performance is more close to foreign brands, rather than how more suitable for domestic robots. Once the direction is wrong, the subsequent use requires the robot manufacturer and the domestic reducer manufacturer to continuously coordinate, run-in, re-coordinate and re-run. For the research and development engineer, the research and development cycle really cannot give him such a long time. Therefore, in terms of managing the research and development and production of reducers, there should be an industry standard to develop reducers that belong to Chinese robots.

At present, most of the RV reducers used in industrial robots are from Japanese brands, followed by South Korea and the Czech Republic. Nearly 75% of the precision reducers used by international robot manufacturing companies such as ABB, Fanuc and Kuka are manufactured by Japanese companies.

Reducer in the domestic and foreign well-known enterprises

RV Reducer

Nabotesk

Nabotsk was merged by Teijin Precision Machinery Co., Ltd. and Naboc Co., Ltd. in 2003. It is the world's largest manufacturer of precision cycloidal pin wheel reducers. Since it was put into mass production by the vertical well factory in 1986, it has produced more than 7 million precision RV reducers by the end of 2017.

Sumitomo Heavy Machinery Reducer (China) Co., Ltd.

Sumitomo Heavy Machinery's reducer for robots in the Chinese market is mainly UV series reducer (I .e. RV reducer on the market). UV series has entered China since 2014. Its products are produced in Japan and have assembly bases in Shanghai and Guangzhou, China.

Nantong Zhenkang Welding Electromechanical Co., Ltd.

Nantong Zhenkang is an early manufacturer of RV reducers for robots in China, and its technical team relies on the resources of Xi'an Micromotor Research Institute. Nantong Zhenkang currently has "ZKRV" brand reducer RV-E, RV-C and RD series with 10 specifications, with an annual production capacity of 30000 sets.

Qinchuan Machine Tool Group Co., Ltd.

Qinchuan machine tool main business organic bed (gear grinding machine and thread grinding machine), reducer (robot), various types of gears, etc. The robot department has more than 200 people, 150 production employees, and research and development accounts for 20% of the personnel. We have branch offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Xi'an and Guangzhou.

SHANGHAI RIC PRECISION MACHINERY CO., LTD

Founded in 1998, Lectra Precision is a professional gear manufacturer. It developed RV reducers in 2013. In 2015, it officially launched four series of precision control reducers including LKRV-E, LKRV-C, LKRV-N and LKRV-S. It cooperates with most domestic manufacturers such as Eston and Guangzhou Qifan and can supply them to manufacturers for trial use. Rick precision RV reducer model is complete, as the only one in China can replace Japan's full range of reducer enterprises.

Zhejiang Hengfengtai Reducer Manufacturing Co., Ltd

Hengfengtai began to develop the first CORT live tooth technology precision reducer in 2006, and developed 7 models of CORT precision reducer series prototype in 2013. Up to now, three series of CORT, HORT(RV) and KORT reducers have been developed, which basically meet the requirements of 5-500kg industrial robots. Hengfengtai's RV reducer has been partially adopted by robot manufacturers such as Eft and Boshi Automation.

harmonic reducer

Hamernako

Founded in 1970, Hamenaco has more than 40 years of experience in harmonic drive research. It is the world's largest manufacturer of harmonic reducers, and Nabotsk is also known as the two giants of robot precision reducers. In January 2011, it invested in the establishment of a wholly-owned subsidiary, Hamernake (Shanghai) Trading Co., Ltd.

SUZHOU GREEN HARMONIC DRIVE TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD

Suzhou Green was established in 2011. The company has more than 30 R & D personnel and has a number of national patents in the field of harmonic transmission. It is the main drafting party of the national standard "Harmonic Gear Reducer for Robots. Suzhou green standard reducer products have 6 series, a total of more than 100 models.