31st ICFG Plenary Meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden
September 6-9, 1998
organised by the Department of Production Engineering, Chalmers Universityof Technology
The 31st ICFG Plenary Meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, from September 6-9, 1998, was organised by the Department of Production Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, headed by Prof. Ralph Crafoord. 40 members and 11 guests from 18 countries attended the meeting which was chaired by Prof. Manfred Geiger, Germany.
Seven new full members from France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain and Turkey as well as four new corresponding members from Japan, Sweden, Turkey and the USA were elected. Three full members from Australia, Germany and Norway were appointed as emeritus members because of retirement in their jobs. According to this, the present status of membership is: member countries 22, full members 50, corresponding members 9, emeritus members 7, honorary members 4.
In 1998, the group has introduced the annual ICFG International Prize which is to be conferred upon young R&D workers of outstanding merit who are authors of original R&D meeting the objectives of ICFG. On the occasion of the 31st Plenary Meeting, the prize was awarded to Dipl.-Ing. Christian Hinsel, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, to honour his paper presentation “Advanced surface and coating technologies for improved tool life in cold forging” and his research activities in cold forging.
Based on the subgroup activities, the following ICFG documents are almost finished and will be published in 1999: “Defects in cold forging”, “Cold forging steels”, “Economical and technological aspects of tool life and tool quality in cold forging”, “Warm forging”. Furthermore, the document “Cold forging of Aluminium” is under preparation.
At the technical sessions nine full and eight short presentations were presented on the following subjects: surface technologies (coating, surface texturing, quality control of surface treatment), tribology (testing of lubricants), steels (effects on cold forgeability), machining of near-net shaped cold forged parts, numerical simulation of forging processes, and process optimization (equalization of extruded lengths in multi-hole extrusion, ballizing process, cold forging of helical gear utilizing dividing flows). The technical sessions were enhanced by technical visits to two well-known Swedish companies, the truck plant of Volvo and the headquarter of the bearing producer SKF.
The next ICFG Plenary Meeting will take place in the period September 12-15, 1999. It will be organised by the Chair of Manufacturing Technology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, headed by Prof. Karl Kuzman.