32nd Plenary Meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia

September 12-15, 1999

organised by the University of Ljubljana and the TECOS Slovenian Tool and Die Development Centre

The 32nd ICFG Plenary Meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from September 12-15, 1999, was hosted by Dr. Karl Kuzman, Professor at the University of Ljubljana and head of the TECOS Slovenian Tool and Die Development Centre. 34 members and 15 guests from 19 countries attended the meeting which was chaired by Prof. Manfred Geiger, Germany.

After two periods of office, the ICFG chairman Prof. M. Geiger and the Technical Secretary Prof. L. Cser are succeeded by Dr. Jens Grønbæk, Danfoss Strecon, and Dr. Viggo Maegaard, Danfoss, both from Denmark. Three new full members from Germany, Japan and Switzerland as well as one new corresponding member from Australia were elected. Three full members from Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom were appointed as emeritus members because of retirement in their jobs. According to this, the present status of membership is: member countries 23, full members 50, corresponding members 10, emeritus members 10, honorary members 4.

Based on the subgroup activities, the following ICFG documents are almost finished and will be published in the beginning of the year 2000: “Steels for Cold Forging”, “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 ten full and five short presentations were presented on the following subjects: process developments (thixoforging, new method for cold forming of rotating parts, cold forging applications in automotive industry), numerical analysis (process simulation, data mining), tool life (die life in warm forging, backtracking approach to the origin of tool life scatter), tribology and machine tools. The technical sessions were enhanced by technical visits to the Slovenian companies ISKRA Avtoelektrika, Domel Zelezniki and Kolektor Idrija.

The next ICFG Plenary Meeting will be hosted in the period September 10-12, 1999 by Prof. M. Geiger at the Chair of Manufacturing Technology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. Thus ICFG participants may directly join the subsequent 10th International Cold Forging Congress ICFC in Stuttgart-Fellbach on September 13-15.