The work aims to solve the problem of perceptual cognition collaboration between industrial design and engineering in the process of machine tool protection appearance design to better seek and enhance the consensus cognition of both sides on the machine tool appearance and improve the efficiency and clarity of the design, thus improving the overall competitiveness of China's machine tool industry. The qualitative research of grounded theory was combined with the quantitative research of Kansei engineering. Firstly, the grounded theory was used to cluster and extract the common perceptual image words in the field of industrial design and engineering. Then, the semantic difference method was used to analyze the impact factors and modeling feature elements of the representative samples, and the mapping relationship between the machine tool design elements and perceptual cognition that could be coordinated by both sides was clarified. Finally, design practice was carried out based on the corresponding specific case requirements. Several influencing factors and corresponding typical perceptual terms of collaborative cognition between industrial design and engineering in the process of machine tool appearance design are defined, and ID&E perceptual cognition collaborative system for machine tool protection appearance design process is constructed, which provides effective method reference and optimization ideas for the field of machine tool appearance design.