37th Plenary Meeting in Istanbul, Turkey

September 12-15, 2004

The 37th Plenary Meeting of the International Cold Forging Group (ICFG) was held from September 13 to 15, 2004 in Istanbul, hosted by Prof. A. Erman Tekkaya from the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara. As a new record 91 participants (including accompanying persons) registered for the Meeting and came to the crossroads between Europe and Asia: Istanbul. 71 delegates (36 from industry and 35 from academia) participated in the ICFG Plenary Meeting which was chaired for the first time by the new chairman Prof. Karl Kuzman (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia). He was supported by the host Prof. A. Erman Tekkaya and Dipl.-Ing. Alexander Putz who runs the permanent secretary´s office at the LFT in Erlangen (Germany).

Memberships

The ICFG delegates welcomed the following new corresponding members: Dr. Franzke and Mr. Stelljes (both Germany), Prof. Altintas and Mr. Pinar (both Turkey), Dr. Ziolkiewicz (Poland), Dr. Arentoft (Denmark) and Dr. Matsumoto (Japan). Within the ICFG there were changes in the membership status of Prof. Groche and Dr. Arfmann (both Germany) who are now new full members of the ICFG and Prof. Pavel Huml (Sweden) who switched his membership to emeritus status.
The new company membership is more and more accepted by the industry. Thus the ICFG could welcome “ThyssenKrupp Presta AG” (Liechtenstein) and “Yamanaka Eng. Co. Ltd.” (Japan) as new company members. More information about the ICFG company membership is available on the ICFG website (http://www.icfg.info
 Company Members).
After the decease of the ICFG Advisory Board Member Prof. Hiroyuki Saiki from Japan, who passed away in March 2004, Prof. Tamotsu Nakamura will be his successor in the Advisory Board. Prof. Saiki was honored by all attendees at the Plenary Meeting.
Altogether the ICFG now consists of 90 personal members from 22 countries over the whole world.

Subgroup activities and publications

Currently, the ICFG has three subgroups. As successor of Dr. Matthias Hänsel, Dr. Christian Hinsel took over the chairmanship of the subgroup “Tool Life & Tool Quality”. The second part of its homonymous document (No. 16/04) will be published in autumn 2004. The subgroup has just finished their activities in making a comparison between steel and cemeted carbide tools in Europe and Japan. The coming topic will be the imrpovement of the tool surface.
Dr. Diane Mynors, the chairman of the subgroup “Process Simulation” summarized the results of the 4th workshop held in Shanghai in May 2004. The coming workshop of this subgroup will be held in Darmstadt (Germany) in May 2005, hosted by Prof. Groche and Dr. Arfmann.
Mr. Stelljes who represented Prof. Steinhoff as chairman of the subgroup “Cold & Hot Forging of Light Weight Materials” presented the activities of the subgroup within the last year. Coming activities will be pronounced here on the ICFG website.

ICFG International Paper Prize 2004

Among several applications the ICFG International Paper Prize 2004 was awarded to Dr. Ryo Matsumoto from the Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University (Japan) for his paper “Precision Warm Forging of Magnesium Alloy with Consideration of Material Property”. Dr. Matsumoto presented his paper to the delegates at the Plenary Meeting and received the prize by the chairman Prof. Kuzman. The prize paper will also be published in one of the coming WIRE issues. Prof. Kuzman asked all attendees to propose good candidates for the ICFG International Paper Prize next year. Deadline for application will be on May 1st, 2005.

Industrial Visits

On the third day of the conference the ICFG delegates visited three companies. One of them – a typical forging company – is KANCA, whose new plant was built in Gebze. Furthermore, the conference participants visited TOYOTETSU (a sheet forming company) and the car manufacturer FORD Otosan in Gölcük.

Next Plenary Meeting 2005

The coming Plenary Meeting in 2005 will be held in Chester in the United Kingdom and will be organized by Dr. Peter Standring. He presented the preliminary program for the Plenary Meeting that will take place from September 14 to 16, 2005. More detailed information will be published here on the ICFG website.

Alexander Putz