Abstract: Manufacturing is the means by which material wealth and civilization are created and as such it has been fueling the growth of new industrialization in our country. It takes manufacturing to transform the results of research and technological development in many fields into products that fulfill human needs and improvement in productivity. Since the turn of the century, core competencies coming forth in the world are high-tech industries. Severe challenges facing us today due to dwindling natural resources, non-renewable energy sources as well as worsening environment call for a brand new thinking in the development of manufacturing science and technology. The national strategic projects have to be supported by extreme manufacturing capability. Reliable service under extreme conditions becomes basic characteristics and requirement for complex manufacturing equipment. Heavy-duty and large capacity manufacturing equipment, due to huge size, heavy payload, large inertia, multi degree-of-freedom, dexterous manipulability, extreme service conditions, is much more difficult to design and manufacture. The principles for energy and matter transformation of man-made systems are the research subjects of manufacturing science. The heavy-duty manufacturing equipment is studied such as super-capacity freeform forging machines, heavy-duty forging manipulators, large payload multi-link mechanical presses and servo mechanical presses, rolling mills, and heavy-duty machine tools. It reviews the development trend in this field and analyzes the gap between China and the state of art in the world. It proposes fundamental scientific and technological issues facing the development of heavy-duty manufacturing equipment including process models and performance evaluation criteria, mapping rules between mechanism and structure topology and performances, principles of fast responses of high power and precision, and fault-tolerant drives, as well as interaction and control of electric and hydraulic coupled systems. The research presented in this paper contributes to China’s technological development strategy for heavy-duty manufacturing equipment.

Key words: Current research and development, Heavy-duty manufacturing equipment, Manufacturing industry