The Taiwan machine tool industry is heading towards the production of industrial automated and large-size machines to save labour costs and increase production efficiency, says Taiwan-based tool manufacturer Campro.

“The trend in the machine tooling industry towards automation has led to our striving for manufacturing fully automated tooling machines that would allow for continuous operations,” says Campro sales manager Kevin Mao.

Therefore, he adds, the company is working on manufacturing machines that will focus on quality and continuous technical innovation.

Campro produces and manufactures double- column, travelling, vertical and horizontal machines, as well as Y-axis lathe and computer numerically controlled lathe machines that can be used, for example, in the automotive, mining, energy and aerospace industries.

With the automotive and mining industries in South-East Asia being its main market, Campro hopes to expand its product offering to the aerospace, shipbuilding and energy industries in 2015.

“The aerospace and shipbuilding industries are major emerging industries nowadays and they all need large tool machines to produce parts and components for the manufacturing of aeroplanes and ships. With the company also moving towards more automated and larger machine tools, [this] will enable these industries to produce their desired components more efficiently,” notes Mao.

In Taiwan, the machine tools manufactured by Campro are used in the production of parts for consumer electronics, optical electronics, medical instruments and luxurious automotive and bicycle upgrades.

As a result, Campro is not ignoring these industries, which are taken into account in its machine tool manufacturing and emerging technological developments.

“Because we have a broad spectrum of industries for which we provide machine tools, we are customer-orientated and flexible in terms of providing the necessary tools. Therefore, we do manufacture custom-made machine tools to suit the need of our customer,” Mao points out.

He indicates that striving to be a leader in the machine tools industry has also meant that the company invests significantly in research and development to stimulate technical innovation for its markets.

“Last year, we started providing products for industry that are five-axis simultaneous machines, which allow for more work to be done in a shorter period. “This allows for the machine to have five-sided control features, which eliminates the need to account for the machining centre’s centre lines of rotation.”

For the next few years, Mao says, the company will continue its trend to upgrade its machine productivity and efficiency using multi- technology application.

• Mavuso visited Taiwan as a guest of the Taiwan External Trade Development Council