How are these "black technologies" refined—— Frontline observation of "specialized, refined, and innovative" enterprises
How to pick the "jewel on the crown" of aviation engine blades? How does the "Super Cell Factory" breed materials for building all things? How can the "soft and strong" rocker arm perform well on the operating table?
In recent years, an increasing number of "specialized, refined, and innovative" enterprises that master "black technology" have become an important support for Chinese manufacturing. Data shows that China has cultivated more than 12000 specialized, refined, and innovative "little giant" enterprises, as well as over 98000 specialized, refined, and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises. Recently, reporters visited several specialized, refined, and innovative enterprises in Beijing that have mastered "black technology", to glimpse their technological innovation capabilities and broad development potential.
Leaves in the Sky
The manufacturing technology of aircraft engines is known as the "crown of manufacturing", and the manufacturing technology of single crystal turbine blades is the "pearl on the crown". For a long time, only a few countries such as the United States, Britain, France, and Russia have been able to manufacture new aviation engines.
If you want to wear a "crown", you must bear its weight: lifting a large aircraft weighing up to 100 tons to soar in the sky, the aircraft engine needs to provide huge thrust, and the turbine blades, which are the source of power, rotate at more than 300 revolutions per second. The centrifugal force they bear is equivalent to 10000 times the mass of the blades themselves, which is equivalent to one turbine blade hanging five small cars.
With such high-speed rotation, the working temperature of the turbine blades reaches over 1700 degrees Celsius, and steel can easily melt. However, turbine blades need to work stably, reliably, and safely for a long time under such complex alternating loads and extreme working conditions.
For a long time, the large-scale, high-quality, high-efficiency, high qualification rate, and high consistency processing and manufacturing of such exquisite craftsmanship have been a global challenge.
Nowadays, Chinese enterprises are able to mass produce with their internationally leading electrical processing equipment and digital twin technology developed by themselves. The reporter saw on the single crystal turbine blade production line of Beijing Hanfei Aviation Technology Co., Ltd. that more than 100 multi axis high-speed electric discharge perforation machine tools were busy automatically processing. Through the protective window, the electric sparks controlled by the machine tools danced on the surface of the blades, and the robots shuttle between the machine tool, stacking area, and inspection area. In the control room, the factory's self-developed digital twin technology displays real-time data on the screen, and the adaptive machining instructions for the gas film hole are issued accordingly.
Beijing Hanfei Aviation Technology Co., Ltd. Single crystal turbine blade production line. Respondents provide pictures
"This is a single crystal turbine blade, which is a key core component of new aviation engines and gas turbines, and is the 'source of power'. Our work at Hanfei is like installing air conditioning for aircraft engines, creating 'capillaries' for single crystal turbine blades, and cooling and cooling the turbine blades." The person in charge of Beijing Hanfei Aviation Technology Co., Ltd. pointed to a palm sized metal component and introduced it.
A single crystal turbine guide blade has several hundred to thousands of axial directions, varying inlet and outlet angles, unevenly distributed and shaped air film holes, and there is also a complex cooling system inside the blade. When machining the air film holes, the inner wall of the inner cavity should not be damaged. If there is a slight deviation during drilling, the turbine blade will burn out under high temperature and high speed conditions, and the aircraft may fall off.
"The turbine blades of an aircraft engine need to be machined with up to tens of thousands of air film holes, like a 'dojo inside a snail shell', and it is necessary to ensure that each air film hole is strictly processed according to the design." said the person in charge of Hanfei Company.
"Hundreds or even thousands of small holes spray cooling gas, forming a gas film that wraps around the blades in order to separate the high-temperature gas in the combustion chamber from the blade surface. Therefore, the quality of gas film hole processing is a key factor affecting the qualification rate, cooling efficiency, and working life of single crystal turbine blades," said the person in charge of Hanfei Company.
The company leader introduced that they have opened up applications in multiple cutting-edge fields such as new aviation engines and gas turbines through digital processing technology for single crystal turbine blade gas film holes and independently developed equipment. This not only solves the bottleneck of large-scale production of core components such as turbine blades in China's aviation engines and gas turbines, but also breaks the technical barriers of international advanced equipment manufacturing. This also marks China's successful removal of this "crown jewel".
"We have developed our own basic algorithms, industrial software, CNC systems, 3D measurement and modeling systems, as well as multi axis CNC machining machines and intelligent production lines, all of which have independent intellectual property rights." The company's head said that after decades of exploration and research, scientific researchers have achieved an international leading level in the qualification rate of single crystal turbine blade processing.
COMAC predicts that from 2021 to 2040, the Chinese aviation market will need to add 9084 new aircraft with a capacity of 50 seats or more, valued at approximately 1.4 trillion US dollars.
"The operation of domestically produced large aircraft has brought enormous opportunities to China's aviation manufacturing industry. We must seize these opportunities and let domestically produced large aircraft equipped with autonomous engines soar into the sky," said the person in charge of Hanfei.
Factories within cells
What can a cell do?
In a laboratory at the Zhongde Industrial Park in Shunyi District, Beijing, researchers added a milky white substance to a large fermentation tank containing starch. After more than 40 hours, a large amount of powdered PHA material that can be used to produce plastic films grew out of the fermentation tank.
3D printed dolls, photosensitive clothing... Products made from PHA can be widely used in fields such as biomaterials, textiles, agriculture, and medicine. Because PHA can quickly and naturally degrade in seawater and soil, this product has been exported to the United States, the European Union, and other places.
"These milky white substances are colonies formed by bacterial cells, and each cell is a 'super cell factory'," Professor Chen Guoqiang, director of the Center for Synthesis and Systems Biology at Tsinghua University, told reporters.
In 2003, a research team led by Chen Guoqiang discovered this "magical microorganism" in Aiding Lake, Xinjiang, China: it can survive in extreme environments with almost no water, a salt concentration of 200 grams per liter, and a temperature difference of nearly 100 degrees. Any other microorganism is almost unable to survive in its growing environment, so it has a natural "immunity" and can be directly cultivated in an open, non sterile environment.
This type of super cell becomes an excellent "biological base" for cell factories.
A large amount of plastic, clothing, medical and other products in people's lives are mostly produced by traditional chemical industries, which not only consume high energy and water, but are also not easy to degrade and are not friendly to nature. The use of biotechnology to synthesize industrial products necessary for human life has become an important direction for future industrial development.
Experts introduce that synthetic biology is an emerging field that integrates biology, engineering, chemistry, and information technology. Scientists use gene editing technology to transform organisms into efficient cellular microfabrics, enabling targeted, efficient, and large-scale processing and transformation of substances. Therefore, synthetic biology has been listed as a strategic emerging technology by many countries and is referred to as the "third biotechnology revolution" by the scientific community.
If ordinary microorganisms are used to manufacture polymer materials, a strictly sterile environment must be used. After 20 years of research, microorganisms from Lake Aiding in China have undergone more than 20 iterations and genetic modifications, finally moving from the laboratory to the production line, and building a super cell factory platform that can achieve open, non sterile, and continuous cultivation.
In the pilot plant of Beijing Micro Structure Factory Biotechnology Co., Ltd., staff checked the working condition of the ingredient tank. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ren Chao
In 2022, the project will be successfully put into production in Beijing Shunyi Sino German Industrial Park, and "small bacteria" will come to Xintiandi and be industrialized.
"Compared with traditional chemical production lines, our production line appears too simple, which is precisely an advantage." Xu Xuanming, Chairman of Micro Structure Factory, pointed to the production line behind it and told reporters that because it does not require the strict sterile and high-pressure environment of traditional chemical industries, it also reduces water and energy consumption by more than 50%.
Xu Xuanming introduced that in addition to PHA, the project can currently produce pharmaceutical raw materials such as tetrahydropyrimidine, compounds 3-hydroxypropionic acid, lysine, amylase, etc. Microorganisms emerge from the laboratory, grow into materials for building everything, apply them to human life, and ultimately return to nature non-toxic and harmless.
The application of PHA goes beyond that. At present, scientists have sent a product of PHA -3-hydroxybutyric acid into space to research and develop more effective drugs for treating osteoporosis.
"We will study the osteogenic effect of 3HB in the microgravity environment of space, providing possibilities for the development of new drugs for preventing osteoporosis." Professor Chen Guoqiang introduced
In the microscopic world that is invisible to the naked eye, synthetic biology is changing the future of the human world. Boston Consulting predicts that by the end of this century, synthetic biology methods will be widely applied in manufacturing, which accounts for over one-third of global output.
The Chinese scientific community and enterprises are also taking action. This year, the "Innovation Alliance for Synthetic Biotechnology and Intelligent Biomanufacturing", jointly initiated by 16 research teams from 8 domestic universities and research institutes, including Tsinghua University and Peking University, and 16 upstream and downstream enterprises in the synthetic biology industry chain, was established in Beijing. It will ride the wave of this technological revolution.
Rocker arms on the operating table
After the patient's surgical path is inputted into the brain, the robot places the instrument into the patient's body through a small incision, accurately avoiding the patient's blood vessels and nerves, and moves to the designated position to drill holes. A medical robot assists doctors in completing orthopedic surgeries in this way, with an error of up to micrometers, precision, and minimally invasive greatly reducing patient pain.
In the past, robots were very rigid, capable of moving, lifting, grasping, and gripping; Nowadays, robots are more flexible, and fine tasks such as peeling eggshells, injections, and suturing wounds are effortless. How are these agile and intelligent robots produced? The reporter found the answer at a robot factory in Shunyi District, Beijing.
Medical specialized robotic arms are the core components of surgical robots, which directly determine the control accuracy and stability of surgical robots. Completing a sensitive robotic arm is not an easy task. The key components, which are the size of a palm, are precisely arranged with encoders, reducers, and circuits, making them the smallest components for forming a robotic arm. Different specifications of joints form the shoulders, elbows, and wrists of the robotic arm, which are then connected together through data cables and circuits to create the shape of the arm.
One of the mysteries of medical robots completing high-precision tasks lies in the accurate positioning, stable control, and agile movement of their arms.
"Each joint is individually driven by independent integrated joints, combined with highly sensitive torque sensors and machine vision. Under the control of self-developed driving algorithms, the robot operating system collaborates with external devices to ultimately achieve 'hand brain eye' coordination." Chen Wei, Deputy General Manager of Beijing Siling Robotics Technology Co., Ltd., introduced that the current sensitivity of its self-developed torque sensors is equivalent to 'sensing the force of a mosquito landing on an arm'.
Having flexible and agile arms and bodies is not enough, a sufficiently intelligent robot must have a smart brain.
Based on more than 10 years of technological accumulation, Siling Robotics integrates core technologies such as robot operating systems, multimodal perception, and motion control, and has more than 100 patents, basically achieving self-developed core technologies.
Based on this, Siling Robotics has participated in multiple orthopedic surgeries, neurosurgery surgeries, and laparoscopic surgeries, and has extended basic research to the field of brain computer interface applications.
"Previously, patients who had undergone spinal surgery would need more than 10 days to get out of bed. Now, after minimally invasive surgery, they can get out of bed in just one day, leaving only a few small holes with a diameter of several millimeters after surgery, reducing the incidence of postoperative complications." Chen Wei said that Siling has collaborated with multiple hospitals and universities to complete multiple animal experiments and clinical surgeries.
At present, more and more intelligent robots are widely used in orthopedics, neurosurgery, rehabilitation, etc. Capsule endoscopy robots, blood collection robots, nursing robots, etc. have become the "powerful assistants" of doctors.
The report from Forward Industry Research Institute shows that from 2017 to 2021, the market size growth rate of medical robots in China was above 20%. Preliminary estimates show that the market size of medical robots in China will reach nearly 10 billion yuan in 2022.
These robots also provide services for industrial, agricultural, educational, and service production and daily life. At a modern intelligent manufacturing factory serviced by Siling Robotics, intelligent robots complete the assembly and testing of products on the production line. These products are produced at a speed of hundreds per hour and meet the requirement of a product yield rate of at least 99.5%. The production line is basically unmanned.
The continuous iteration of innovative technologies and the increasing demand for digital application scenarios have provided broad space for the rapid development of medical robots in China driven by policy environment. Since 2020, many regions such as Guangdong, Hebei, Shanghai, and Zhejiang have introduced policies to support the development of the exoskeleton robot industry; Beijing, Shanghai and other places have included surgical robots in the scope of medical insurance; Beijing has established the first government led collaborative innovation platform for medical robot technology - the Beijing Medical Robot Industry Innovation Center
Experts say that in the future, with the deep integration of cutting-edge technologies such as medical robots and artificial intelligence, brain interaction, 5G, and big data, the domestic robot industry will become more intelligent.
Data shows that China has cultivated more than 70000 specialized, refined, and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises, including 8997 specialized, refined, and innovative "little giant" enterprises. Last year, specialized, refined, and new small and medium-sized enterprises accounted for 59% of newly listed companies. More than 1300 specialized, refined, and new small and medium-sized enterprises have been listed on the A-share market, accounting for 27% of the total number of A-share listed companies.
The fields in which specialized and innovative "little giant" enterprises operate vary greatly, but their soul lies in innovation. In the past three years, among the newly established small and medium-sized enterprises in Beijing, "technology oriented" enterprises have accounted for half, and over 40% of the core technology products of enterprises have filled the international and domestic gap. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, "Little Giant" enterprises have accumulated more than 140000 authorized invention patents. As China continues to promote the cultivation of specialized, refined, and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises, a group of "little giants" with strong innovation capabilities will continue to grow into true giants.
