Friday, October 01, 2010
InnoTrans Trade Show 21st - 24th Sept, 2010
Hello again everyone. Well, some of you may remember my blog last year from Seatec in Italy; here’s my latest one. I hope you enjoy it.
Last week I attended the InnoTrans Trade Show in Berlin in order to give some technical and commercial support to our Italian distributor – Vaber Industrial, who was exhibiting there for the first time.
This planned three day trip didn’t get off to the auspicious start I had hoped for as the flight to Berlin was delayed over four hours, which resulted in me missing most of the first day. I made up for this over the next couple of days and can safely say that my legs are still slightly wobbly from all that standing (anyone who’s participated at a trade show will know what I mean).
InnoTrans, for anyone not familiar with the name, is the world’s biggest trade show dedicated to the Rail Industry. Every facet was there, click onto the link for more information www.innotrans.com.
On my arrival at Innotrans, a number of things struck me, namely everything is vast. There were 25 Halls – all the size of football pitches or bigger. With a whacking 3.5km to cover I can understand why they laid on a bus shuttle service. With an entrance fee of €46 the organisers obviously targeted companies and individuals with a genuine interest in the rail industry and kept the students out.
Over the years, I have attended a number of trade shows, but I can quite honestly say that I have never seen so many visitors. Vaber’s stand, which was situation in an ideal location, had a steady stream of visitors all day, and needless to say the coffee machine was pumping espressos out at a high rate of knots. Our Italian visitors, who were from the biggest OEMs in Italy, were delighted they could drink “real” coffee.
So where, you may be asking, do structural adhesives fit into this industry? Well, many train manufactures see the benefits and advantages of using ITW Plexus as an alternative to traditional methods. A simple example, aluminium, because of its weight, strength and anti-corrosive properties is increasingly being used in carriage and wagon construction, both internally and externally.
There are two traditional ways to fix aluminium parts together – welding or mechanical fixing with nuts and bolts, screws or rivets. ITW Plexus on the other hand offers design engineers the possibility of joining, not only aluminium to aluminium, but different types of substrates together too (which is not possible with welding); this not only improves aesthetics by avoiding rivets and screw heads, but also offers high flexibility and fatigue resistance. This also helps to overcome the problem of joining two different materials which have different thermal expansion properties.
The trade show was truly an international exhibition; I spoke to visitors from South Korea, Japan, China, USA, and India (and that was just in the queue for the gents). All continents were represented and my feeling is that both Vaber and ITW Plexus had a very worthwhile and positive experience, with some goods leads and contacts made.
(L-R) Kevin Lacey, Alberto Del Panta, Silvia Salamone,
Alberto Bertini, Paul Wright & Chris Coll
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