The Abrasives Hub

14 January 2011

Despite the uncertainty throughout manufacturing industry, 2011 is a year in which conference organisers has a lot to offer the abrasives industry with three different conferences of direct relevance and a range of practical training events.

One of the most focussed scientific conferences for the whole of the abrasives industry is ISAAT 2011 which is planned to take place in Stuttgart, Germany between 18-21 September. Since 2002, the International Committee for Abrasives (ICAT) and the Japan Society for Abrasives Technology (JSAT) have been the main promoters of the International Symposium of Advances in Abrasive Technology. This year the conference has been organised by Hochschule Furtwangen University, HFU, and is also a sponsor alongside ICAT, JSAT and the German Research Foundation and the Institute of Grinding and Precision Technology.

The mail selling point for this conference is that it brings together academics and industry working in abrasives technologies. This year’s conference covers some 20 different topics including abrasive machining, abrasive jet machining, grinding wheel and abrasive grain technologies, advanced cutting technology, chemical mechanical polishing and silicon wafer processing, truing, dressing and electrolytic in-line dressing, ELID, finishing, lapping and polishing. In addition, it will look at the design, fabrication and analysis of devices for the applications of abrasive technologies.

Other areas of interested look at machining topics – environmentally friendly processes, brittle materials, micro, nano, EDM, ultrasonic and laser machining plus high speed and high efficiency processes. Then there are related topics such as tribology, materials characterisation, cooling technology and measurement and control.

This conference series was launched in 1997 and has been an annual event ever since. The importance of this conference is that it aims to be a conference with global reach and has been held in Australia, China, Russia, the US, Turkey, Korea, Hong Kong and Japan.

As well as universities, there are a few companies involved in the symposium through its scientific committee including Diamant-Gesellschaft Tesch GmbH, Saint-Gobain Diamantwerkzeuge, Tyrolit, SIMtech. Other companies are involved through ICAT such as Next Generation Technology Group Inc, Saint Gobain Abrasives, Cool-Grind Technologies and Toshiba Machine Company Inc.

Diamond-related conferences

In the US, the North American abrasives industry can look forward to the biennial International Technical Conference on new technology for diamond, cubic boron nitride (cBN) and other related materials classified as superabrasive or ultra-hard materials. The fifth Intertech conference will take place in May and is aimed at covering topics related on the use of industrial diamond (both natural and synthetic), cubic boron nitride, nano-diamonds, CVD diamond and polycrystalline materials.

Intertech 2011 will take place between May 2-4, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Chicago, Illinois USA. will host global superabrasive suppliers, toolmakers, research organizations and end users to reach more people involved in all aspects of medical innovation, machining, grinding, drilling, sawing, texturing, polishing, wear parts, diamond windows, wire dies and other uses of superabrasive & ultra-hard materials.

The conference is aimed at a broad range of user industries including aerospace, construction & renovation, oil & gas exploration, automotive, glass, wood, medical and electronics. The conference is particularly interested in technological breakthroughs that improve production or solve problems or create new opportunities.

This conference is one of few remaining dedicated to this section of the abrasives industry since the Diamond at Work conference was cancelled in 2008 after two successful conferences when its only sponsor, Element Six, withdrew funding for the event.

Still in the diamond space is Diamond 2011 also taking place in Germany and is organised by Elsevier. This is more of a heavy duty science event that looks at the broader topic of diamond science and novel applications in medicine, electronics and covers everything from single crystalline diamond wafer production to quantum effects in diamond applied for quantum computing, cryptography and magnetic field sensing. This is an annual conference that has been run for more than 20 years.

However within Europe, the European Diamond University which is the initiative of four companies involved in diamond tooling solutions, Carbodiam, Eiche, Samedia and Ultradia is offering more practical training programme based on delivering training to companies using diamond tooling. It is offering a range of 20 courses for the first six months and does limit the number of participants per course to eight participants.