JIMTOF declarations: physical AI is the product, the ship dates are 2027–2030

This was a declarations week, not a shipping week. JIMTOF 2026 opened in Tokyo on 26 Oct and the machine-tool trade branded physical AI as the product. The ship dates attached run from January 2027 to 2030, and the only measured humanoid-versus-human cycle datum in the window is unflattering.

What landed

Sat 24 Oct — Sandvik Coromant GC1250 titanium milling grade reported

Trade press reported Sandvik Coromant’s GC1250 milling grade for titanium (EthaCore carbide with Zertivo PVD). It completes the company’s 1200-series grade chain.

It is a plain tooling launch, and one of the few hard metal-cutting items in the window.

Mon 26 Oct — JIMTOF opens, smaller than 2024 but still the second-biggest

JIMTOF 2026 opened at Tokyo Big Sight with 1,134 exhibitors from 22 countries and 4,422 booths. That is the second-highest exhibitor count in show history.

It is down from 1,268 exhibitors and 5,744 booths in 2024. The organiser attributes the drop to East Halls 4–6 being closed for renovation.

Nikkei’s opening-day headline called it machine tools’ “first year of physical AI”, with autonomous operation up front.

Mon 26 Oct — FANUC puts the AI inside the CNC

FANUC’s exhibit was “Physical AI CNC”. It couples the CNC, a Smart Digital Twin and generative AI, connected by a FANUC-provided MCP (Model Context Protocol) server so the model can reach CNC and twin data. AI proposals are simulated in the twin and applied only after operator approval.

For a machining shop, the interface is the part to watch. A named, concrete way to expose control and twin data to a model is more useful than the label.

Separately, FANUC’s AI Masterless Vision lets a robot pick untaught cylindrical workpieces into a lathe chuck with zero vision teaching. It was live at the show, and shipments start January 2027. This is the one FANUC item with a ship date.

Mon 26 Oct — Mitsubishi Electric puts the humanoid beside the CNC

Mitsubishi Electric’s humanoid–CNC machining system ran live at booth S2003 from day one. Development was announced 21 Oct, before this window.

It combines an AI task planner, a physical-AI CNC and a general-purpose humanoid, with the robot model unspecified. The humanoid does setup, cleaning, part removal, inspection and troubleshooting under natural-language instruction. The target is commercialisation by 2030.

No customer line, cycle times, unattended-hours figure or safety validation has been published.

Mon 26 Oct — Machine tools sell into the humanoid bill of materials

The organiser ran a special exhibition titled “Machine Tools Supporting the Evolution of Japanese Humanoid Robots”, framed around AI robotics as one of 17 fields in Japan’s Growth Strategy. A second zone paired a FANUC hand-scraping (“kisage”) robot with master craftsmen finishing machine-tool slideways.

Exhibitors made the supply-chain pitch directly:

• Nidec group: TAKISAWA’s TPS-3100HII repurposes non-circular piston machining for strain-wave gearing components. The ZI35A internal gear grinder targets robot internal gears. The TR-20W robot, which uses physical AI, clears tangled chips.
• Star Micronics: the new SB-12RII 13 mm Swiss-type lathe is aimed at small precision parts “such as medical device and humanoid robot components”.

Gear, strain-wave and small-part geometry is where humanoid demand reaches machining this week. The humanoid as shop-floor operator is still a booth demo.

Mon 26 Oct — Sandvik Coromant CoroThread Mill 500

Sandvik Coromant launched the CoroThread Mill 500 orbital thread mill, successor to the CoroMill Plura R217. It cuts material up to 48 HRC and has 3×D and 4×D chatter-free variants.

Mon 26 Oct — ROKAE and Schaeffler Taicang

ROKAE reported its 10,000th humanoid force-controlled arm. It also reported five Helios wheeled humanoids working a humanoid-component line at Schaeffler Taicang. Schaeffler’s own account differs; see Gaps.

Tue 27 Oct — Okuma and DMG MORI show agents

Okuma showed an AI agent as a reference exhibit. DMG MORI demoed its generative-AI “Service Agent”, launched 19 Oct and outside the window. It diagnoses faults from manuals and drafts the service request.

Tue 27 Oct — Daedong Gear signs EYOU MOUs in Shanghai (announced Thu 29 Oct)

Daedong Gear and Daedong Robotics signed MOUs with China’s EYOU on 27 Oct, and announced them 29 Oct. The plan has these pieces:

• a China JV by January 2027;
• 30,000 actuator sets a year;
• first-generation actuators in H1 2027;
• Korean mass production from 2029.

Per GGII, EYOU ranked No. 1 in China for harmonic joint-module shipments for humanoids in 2025, at about 95,000 sets. About 1.1M sets are expected in 2026. It is also the largest production actuator supplier to AgiBot.

This reads as a hedge on Chinese cost, and a way to learn the process before repatriating production in 2029. It is not a bet on 2027 volumes.

Wed 28 Oct — Leju’s 15 humanoids: 98% success, 2.7x slower than a person

Fifteen Leju Kuavo humanoids ran 1,000 hours on a Zhejiang auto-parts line, handling 60,000 small metal parts at 98% success. Cycles ran sub-40 s against a 15 s human average, about 2.7x slower.

This is the only measured humanoid-versus-human datum in the window. Test any “humanoids replace operators this year” claim against it.

Gaps / contradictions

• FANUC Physical AI CNC has no ship date. No release date, price or control series appears in the brief’s sources. Only the robot-side AI Masterless Vision has a date (January 2027). “FANUC ships physical AI in the CNC” is unsupported.
• New branding, not new capability. The same AI-machining features were shown at IMTS in September under a different label (Kezuriba, a T3 source, 29 Oct).
• Mitsubishi’s demo is undocumented. The humanoid maker is unnamed. There are no cycle times, intervention rates or safety evidence. 2030 is a target, not a plan with milestones.
• Schaeffler Taicang robot count. Schaeffler described six humanoids across five stations. ROKAE described five Helios units. Neither explains the difference.
• The show shrank. 1,134 exhibitors against 1,268 in 2024 is attributed to renovation-driven space loss, and it is still the second-highest count ever. Don’t read it as a demand signal either way.
• Attendance is unverified. The organiser targeted 130,000+ and had published no daily numbers as of 29 Oct.
• Leju’s data is T3. It is a trade-press report of a single deployment.

What to watch

• JIMTOF final attendance against the 130,000+ target. The show’s last day is 31 Oct, according to the Kezuriba report.
• FANUC Physical AI CNC availability. Watch for a release date, price and control series.
• FANUC AI Masterless Vision shipments, January 2027.
• Daedong Gear and EYOU JV formation, by January 2027, with first-generation actuators in H1 2027.
• Mitsubishi humanoid-CNC. Look for the first named humanoid partner, cycle times or safety data ahead of the 2030 target.
• More machining-trade humanoid-parts pitches, as in the strain-wave, internal-gear and small-part examples above.

Background, outside the window, 22 Oct: Sandvik Q3 order intake was SEK 36,948m, +17% organic. JMTBA’s September orders were ¥223.2bn, a record month, +60.4% year on year, the 15th straight month of growth.