I am Chen Gong, a senior mechanical engineer at Haitong Machinery. I have been engaged in the research and development and customized design of bending machines for nearly ten years. From the precision bending of titanium alloy parts for aerospace to the complex forming of battery trays for new energy vehicles, my team and I have witnessed the rapid iteration of the industry’s demand for equipment. Today, from the perspective of a “machine maker”, I will share how we break the limitations of traditional bending machines through deep customization and create real value for customers.

1. Why do we say that “standardized bending machines are failing”?

In the workshop, I often hear such complaints:

The root cause of these problems is that the production scene in the era of Industry 4.0 has been highly fragmented. Take a new energy vehicle customer we serve as an example. Their demand list clearly states:

• The same equipment needs to process 2mm carbon steel (frame structure) and 0.6mm magnesium alloy (battery heat sink);
• Switch more than 15 bending programs in a single day, and the changeover time is less than 30 minutes;
• Generate digital reports such as bending angle and pressure curve in real time.

This is far beyond the design logic of traditional bending machines. And our answer is always clear: reconstruct the equipment DNA with customization.

2. The three-layer penetration of Haitong’s customized design

1. The first layer: hardware reconstruction from “usable” to “precise matching”

In the R&D workshop, we disassembled the equipment of 37 competitors and found that 80% of the “general bending machines” have the paradox of performance redundancy and insufficient rigidity.

Case 1: Aerospace titanium alloy bending solution

A satellite manufacturing company once had a parts scrap rate of up to 12% due to the excessive springback rate of titanium alloy (±0.8°). We broke through in three steps:

• Adopting a dual closed-loop servo control system to compensate for material rebound in real time;
• Increasing the rigidity of the frame to 320kN/mm (the industry average is 200kN/mm) to suppress minor deformation;
• Developing a -20℃ low-temperature test chamber to simulate the material properties in a space environment.

Finally, the error was stabilized at ±0.05°, helping customers pass NASA’s supply chain audit.

Case 2: Traceless bending of ultra-thin electronic parts

In response to the scratch problem of a 0.3mm stainless steel middle frame of a mobile phone manufacturer, we pioneered a magnetic suspension support system:

• Generate a dynamic support surface with an accuracy of 0.01mm through an electromagnetic array to eliminate friction between the plate and the workbench;
• The mold surface is coated with diamond-like carbon (DLC) with a hardness of HV4000;

This solution increases the product yield from 76% to 99.3%, saving customers 27 million in rework costs each year.

2. The second layer: the intelligent core that makes the machine “think”

Our HT-OS system (Haitong Smart Operating System) has been upgraded to version 4.0, and three functional modules directly hit the pain points:

3. The third layer: Ecological empowerment beyond equipment

Last year, the “equipment + service” package we designed for a small and medium-sized sheet metal factory attracted industry attention:

• Provide a flexible cooperation model that charges by bending meters to reduce customers’ initial investment;
• By installing IoT modules, remotely optimize the production schedule of its idle equipment;
• Result: The customer’s equipment utilization rate increased from 58% to 89%, and the transformation cost was recovered within 3 months.

III. The “Haitong Methodology” behind customization

In the weekly technical seminars, my team and I always adhere to three principles:

4. Advice to fellow engineers

If you are evaluating a customized bending machine, please make sure that the supplier has the following capabilities:

• ✅ Interdisciplinary team: Our project team includes a PhD in materials science, an AI algorithm engineer, and a senior sheet metal craftsman
• ✅ Full-process verification system: From FEA finite element analysis to 1 million fatigue tests, Haitong’s QMS system covers 217 quality control points
• ✅ Open cooperation mentality: A customer once asked to participate in our DFEMA (design failure mode analysis) meeting, and finally jointly optimized 13 risk points

5. In the end: The essence of customization is “empathy”

In the R&D center late at night, the simulation curve on the display is still jumping. As engineers, our proudest moment is not seeing the machine parameters set a new record, but receiving a call from a customer: “Mr. Chen, that equipment has withstood the peak of Double 11 orders again today.”

At Haitong Machinery, customization has never been a high price tag, but the use of technology to translate requirements and the use of craftsmanship to fulfill promises. If you are looking for a partner who “understands technology”, please feel free to walk into our workshop at any time – there is no sales talk here, only a group of engineers seriously discussing: “Where should we start for the next 0.01° breakthrough?”