Page 26 - MetalForming January 2010

Fabtech/Welding Show/METALFORM
...unleashes a bevy of new products onto a marketplace hungry for new technology aimed at improving productivity, quality and safety.
BY BRAD F. KUVIN, EDITOR
Now sporting three shows in one Precision Metalforming Association last longer; www.mpimagnet.com,
venue, the 2009 Fabtech Interna-
tional and AWS Welding Show including METALFORM that convened last November at Chicago’s McCormick Place felt like a huge mega-mall targeted toward shoppers of all sorts of forming and fabricating products. To see it all, visitors needed roller skates—perhaps powered skates at that. If you attended, along with the 25,000 others that did so, you undoubtedly came home with a long list of “toys” that you would have liked Santa to deliver. Or, for those that don’t believe—products that you’d like your company to invest in now or in the near future to allow your forming and fabricating company to keep pace with the rest of the industry in terms of pro- ductivity and quality.
Filling nearly 400,000 sq. ft. of booth space that displayed the wares of more than 1000 exhibitors, the giant trade- show displayed more than 500 new prod- ucts. What follows represents a small sampling of the new products introduced in Chicago last November; we’ll present more product introductions from the show in future issues of MetalForming.
Award Winners
As part of the show’s activities, the
(PMA) Next Generation Leaders Divi- sion awarded three exhibiting compa- nies with Innovation Awards. Next-gen- eration leaders in attendance at the tradeshow visited the booths of com- panies displaying new materials, equip- ment/services, and software/machine controls, and then evaluated those com- panies to determine the winners of the third-annual Next Generation Innova- tion Awards. Winners were presented with a certificate from Division Chair Jeff Aznavorian of Clips and Clamps Industries, and Vice Chair Rick Bach- man of Feintool North America.
The Best New Equipment/Service Innovation Award went to Magnetic Products, Highland, MI, which displayed the Micromag high-intensity magnetic filter manufactured by Eclipse Magnet- ics, based in Sheffield, UK. Micromag filtration technology uses high-power neodymium rare-earth magnets to remove ferrous and paramagnetic con- tamination from fluids and proves par- ticularly effective with machine-tool oils, coolants and hydraulic-fluid machinery systems. Removed contam- ination can be recycled, eliminating disposal costs, and high filtration effi- ciency means lubricants and coolants
www.eclipse-magnetics.co.uk.
The Best New Software/Machine Controls Innovation Award went to Wintriss Controls, Acton, MA, for a new version of its LETS Line Efficiency Track- ing Software that offers state-of-the- art pressroom data collection. The new release provides customers with more accurate calculations of overall equip- ment effectiveness in applications where the speed of the job is limited by machine
24 METALFORMING / JANUARY 2010
www.metalformingmagazine.com
configuration. LETS Version 3.4 calcu- lates OEE by applying an ideal rate for each part/machine combination.
Wintriss also introduced its Smart- Pac2 Servo, (above) a control package developed specifically for servo- mechanical presses. The control uses a