The Lifeng stand is into its second day at the 21st China (Boxing) International Kitchenware Expo, and the traffic has changed character since the show opened. The first day was mostly people walking the line to see what each station does. Today they arrived with something in hand: a part drawing, a photo on a phone, a monthly volume written on the back of a business card.

Groups of three and four moved from the laser cutting centre to the bending centre and on to the robotic cell, and the conversations ran longer than they did yesterday. Engineers spent the afternoon on specifics: gauge, gripper type, cycle time, how many part numbers a shift has to cover. The four stations on the stand are described in our opening-day report; this is what buyers wanted to know about them.

Looking down the stand on day two. The laser cutting centre is on the left; the automatic bending centre sits behind the entrance sign on the right.

The questions sorted themselves by where a plant already stands. Shops cutting blanks by hand ask about coil first, since that is where material cost sits. Shops already running one automated station want to know which one to add next. Grippers come up before speed in almost every conversation, and changeover time before price.

Engineers with a group at the LF-3015 fiber laser. The screen behind runs footage of a complete stainless kitchen cabinet line.

The bending centre held a group in front of it for most of the afternoon.

The far end of the stand has had steady traffic too. A tool-change version of the bending centre, a tube-sheet turnover unit and an automatic loading cart sit there, and they tend to start the same conversation, about what happens between the machines rather than inside them.

Mid-afternoon: four separate conversations running along the red carpet at once.

The far end of the stand, where the tube-sheet turnover unit and the automatic loading cart sit.

The show runs through 28 October. Engineers are on the stand for the remaining days, and the quickest way to get a straight answer on thickness range, gripper choice or cycle time is to bring the actual part. If you can't get to Boxing this week, send the part list and monthly volume instead and we'll work from that.