In recent years, the production of large forgings in China has made great progress, reaching a certain scale and level of production, but the process, equipment and management still cannot meet the needs of the market. The Chinese die forging industry is still dominated by old-fashioned forging hammers and double disk friction presses, which still has a large gap compared with the developed countries in the world. It is far from meeting the needs of the domestic and foreign forging markets, and it is in urgent need of transformation and improvement. So far, only about 150 hot die forging press production lines have been built, and hot precision forging, warm forging and cold forging production processes have been developed.

In 2002, the output of large forgings was nearly 400,000 tons, and the output of die forgings was about 2 million tons. Among them, precision forgings (including cold and warm forgings) are nearly 100000 tons. Among die forgings, car forgings are nearly 300000 tons. With the rapid development of China's automobile industry, automobile forgings may reach about 1.5 million tons in the future, of which car forgings will account for 70%.

The forging technology and equipment owned in China are far from meeting the needs of forging production. According to prediction, the forging technology needed in China in the future is as follows:

1. Precision cold and mild hot forming technology and non-ferrous metal forging technology.

2. Intelligent technology of forging.

3. Composite forging technology.

4. Hydroforming technology and laser forming technology.

5. Other special forming technologies.

The forging equipment required by China in the future is as follows:

1. The high-speed hydraulic press that can replace the 5t free forging hammer can be modified or replaced.

2. About 100 sets (pieces) of 1600-6300t hot die forging press production line are required.

About 50 sets (pcs) of 3.50-100KJ electro-hydraulic hammer are required.

4. 30 600-4000t screw presses.

5. Several hot die forging presses of less than 1600 tons.

6. 200-1600t multi station cold and warm forging press is used for precision forging of about 10-15 sets.

7. Cross wedge mill, bar shear, band sawing machine, oscillating machine and flat forging machine will be increased.

8. Heating equipment will increase synchronously due to the increase of die forging lines.

9. With the development of machinery industry and automobile industry, high speed upsetting machine will have a big growth.

10. The forging auxiliary equipment, especially the automation system, will be increased.

Due to the progress of forging technology, die manufacturing technology will have a great development. To this end, the mold equipment and technology required by China in the future are as follows:

1. High speed CNC machining centers (vertical, horizontal, gantry), especially high-speed CNC milling machines with more than 30000 revolutions. The processing of foreign ordinary hot die forging dies has begun to use heat treated modules to be milled at high speed on the production line composed of 3-4 CNC machining centers, without EDM and grinding correction. The dimensional accuracy and finish fully meet the technical requirements, with good quality, high life and low cost.

2. High precision EDM machine tool.

3. High precision wire cutting machine.

4. High precision CNC universal milling machine.

5. CNC profiling milling machine.

6. Rapid prototyping technology and equipment.

7. High speed simulation software.