From March 20, 2019 to March 21, 2019, the Second Session of General Meeting of the Second China Construction Machinery Association Excavating Machinery Branch was held in Changsha. Leaders, experts and scholars attending the meeting conducted in-depth exchanges and discussions on new development, new trends and new tasks of the excavating machinery industry both at home and abroad. At the meeting, all member units were called on to jointly assume the responsibility for the development of the shield industry, promote the industry innovation, provide more Chinese schemes for global customers, create more important machines for a great power, and contribute more Chinese wisdom.

At the meeting, Mr. Xia Limin, Executive Director of Sunny Seals UTEC (Suzhou) Sealing Solutions Co., Ltd. delivered the keynote speech on “Breaking Through the Monopoly of Sealing Technology, Contributing to China’s Shield Manufacturing” - Advancing UTEC (Suzhou) Sealing Solutions Co., Ltd.

In the report, Manager Xia analyzed the current situation of the main drive seal of the shield machine inChina, and the bottlenecks to be broken through as required by the domestication of the main drive seal of the shield machine. He made a detailed introduction to the efforts made by UTEC Sealing Solutions - a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sunny Seals – to overcome the difficulties of the sealing materials and processing technology for the main drive of the shield machine in the past seven years.

Manager Xia mentioned that the domestication of the main drive seal of the shield machine is the long-term goal of UTEC. Through persistence and hard work, UTEC has realized the independent innovation of sealing technology for the main drive of shield, breaking the foreign monopoly and achieving good application performance.

Manager Xia pointed out that 80~90% of the main drive sealing products of the five major domestic OEMs still rely heavily on imported seals. The foreign spare parts are high in price, long in supply cycle and insufficient in maintenance and repair response timeliness, which not only seriously affects the manufacturing cycle and procurement cost of the domestic shield machine, but also affects the production efficiency and construction period of the application enterprise.

After seven years of research and efforts, UTEC has conducted comprehensive tests and research on materials and technology, to achieve key technological breakthroughs in sealing material performance and large-scale processing technology. The products can meet the stringent requirements for the main drive seal of the shield, which already has made sufficient technology and production preparations for the full domestication of the main drive seal of the shield machine.

He said that in the future, UTEC would further improve the shield sealing test equipment to meet the new requirements of the evolving shield main drive for sealing materials and product performance, and would make all efforts for the domestication development of the shield equipment manufacturing industry chain. With high-quality and high-reliability sealing elements, the independently innovative important shield machines of a great power will be promoted to go abroad and go to the world.

Mr. Xia’s speech was unanimously recognized by the leaders and experts.

After the meeting, Dong Biqin, deputy director of the original Major Technical Equipment Office under the State Council, specially listened to UTEC team’s report on the details of the promotion of the main drive seal of the shield, and spoke highly of UTEC’s contributions to the domestication of the main drive seal of the shield.

At the meeting, major OEMs paid attention to UTEC’s report, made exchanges and consulted. After the meeting, a group of people including Chen Chuanlin, chief engineer of Shanghai Metro Shield Equipment Engineering Co., Ltd. made a special trip to Suzhou, to learn more about UTEC’s production conditions, quality assurance, testing means and other conditions After the inspection, Shanghai Metro Shield Equipment Engineering Co., Ltd. preliminarily determined that UTEC joined the supplier network and identified the arrangements for the next step to promote cooperation.