35th Plenary Meeting in Otaniemi, Finland

September 1-4, 2002

The 35th Plenary Meeting of the International Cold Forging Group (ICFG) was held in Otaniemi (Finland) from September 1st to 4th, hosted by Prof. Kivivuori from the Helsinki University of Technology. The number of participants increased in relation to the meeting last year in Japan. 28 members and 21 guests from 17 countries (18 among all participants came from industry) attended the meeting, which was chaired by Dr. Jens Grønbæk (STRECON A/S, Denmark) and supported by Prof. Karl Kuzman (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) as the Technical Secretary and by Dipl.-Ing. Alexander Putz who runs the permanent secretary´s office in Erlangen (Germany).
Membership, organisation

The ICFG delegates welcomed Prof. T. Ishikawa (Japan), Mr. J. Barriga (Spain), Mr. H. Huwiler (Switzerland), Dr. W. Slagter (Netherlands) and Dr. G. Arfmann (Germany) as new corresponding members. Prof. J.A.G. Kals, Prof. J.A.H. Ramaekers (both Netherlands), Prof. T. Dean (UK) and Prof. S. Sheljaskow (Bulgaria) were elected as new emeritus members. Thus, the present status of membership comes to 22 member countries with 43 full members, 18 corresponding members, 11 emeritus members and 5 honorary members.

Over the last years, the ICFG, and especially the Advisory Board of the ICFG, has tried to attract more members from industry in order to raise the relative percentage of industrial members in relation to academic members. Therefore, the ICFG established a new form of membership, the company membership. The ICFG chairman presented his proposal, which was discussed and accepted by the delegates. The final version will be published on the ICFG website after the Advisory Board Meeting in January 2003.

Dr. J. Grønbæk also presented the new structure of the Advisory Board. In the future, the chairman will be elected for a two-year period with a possibility to be re-elected for one additional period. The seat of the vice-chairman will be held by the past chairman as long as a future chairman is appointed. The new treasurer of the ICFG is Prof. M. Geiger as a successor of Prof. T. Dean. Therefore, the ICFG bank accounts were moved from Birmingham (UK) to Erlangen (Germany). In addition, the Advisory Board has three to five members proposed by the Advisory Board itself. Concerning these members there has been one personal change within the meeting: Prof. K. Osakada will be replaced by Prof. H. Saiki in the Advisory Board.
Next Plenary Meeting

Dr. J. Grønbæk presented the preliminary program of the coming Plenary Meeting in the United States 2003, which is prepared by Prof. T. Altan who will host this meeting together with B. Swope. The first part will take place in Columbus (Ohio) and the second part in Detroit including industrial visits. The exact date and the program is not defined yet, but it will be published as soon as possible.
New documents

Within the last year the ICFG published three new documents based on the subgroup activities. The documents No. 13/02 “Cold Forging of Aluminium” and No. 14/02 “Tool Life & Tool Quality – Part 1” were published at the beginning of 2002. The latest document No. 15/02 presents a report from the first workshop of the subgroup “Process Simulation”, which was held in Ankara (Turkey) 2001. This document also includes a CD with all technical presentations. All documents can be purchased at the Meisenbach (Bamberg, Germany) for 30,- EURO each (check ICFG homepage).
ICFG Subgroups

Dr. M. Hänsel from Krupp Presta AG, chairman of the ICFG Subgroup “Tool Life and Tool Quality in Cold Forging”, presented the structure of Part 2 of their document, which is planned to be published in 2003. Prof. E. A. Tekkaya, chairman of the subgroup “Process Simulation”, reported about the workshop in Padua (Italy) in April 2002. The presentations and the results of this workshop will be published in a booklet in 2003. Prof. K. Steinhoff, chairman of the subgroup “ Cold and Hot Forging of Light Weight Materials” presented the outcome of the last workshop in Delft (Netherlands). Three selected papers from this workshop are or will be published in WIRE. Further presentations from this workshop can be downloaded from the ICFG-website.
Technical presentations

9 technical presentations were given:

1. Tekkaya:  Assessment and Improvement of Analytical Force Computations for Cold Forward Rod Extrusion
2. Ishikawa:  Prediction of Hardness Distribution in Cold Forged Products Considering Blue Brittleness
3. Jäppinen:  Testing of Dual Phase Steels for Cold Forging
4. Krallics:  Manufacture of Ultra Fine-grained Materials by Severe Plastic Deformations
5. Ollilainen: Imaform CF, A New Low Carbon Hardenable (LCH) Steel for Cold Forging
6. Saiki:  Influence of the Roughness Geometry of Tool Surface and the Flow Stress of Coated Solid Lubricants on Cold Forging Tribo-conditions
7. Im: Determination of Friction Conditions by Tip Test of Aluminium Alloys
8. Putz: Examination of the Real Prestressing Conditions of Tooling Systems
9. Meidert: Implementation and Assessment of Fatigue Models for Prediction of Die Life for Cold Forging Dies
Industrial Visits

During the last day the delegates and guests visited two companies. In the first company “Fiskars Oy” modern designed gardening hand tools are produced and in the second company “Fundia Oy” all participants could see well organised wire hot rolling lines.

Karl Kuzman, Alexander Putz