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

Thursday, September 23, 2010

E-RA reach the finals

The final results for the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE competition were published and the E-RA took an impressive second place in the alternative side-by-side class.

The competition started with 136 cars, of which only a few made it to the finals. There were several tests including technical inspection, acceleration/braking, lateral acceleration and dynamic safety. The E-RA successfully passed them all.

Congratulations to the RaceAbout team.

Find out more about the E-RA in the video released by Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

E-RA enter the finals of the Progressive Insurance Automotive XPRIZE

Having successfully passed all the tests (Acceleration/Braking, Lateral Acceleration Tests and the Avoidance Test), the E-RA has entered the final stage of the Progressive Insurance Automotive XPRIZE.

E-RA passed the technical inspection early on Monday morning as the first team. Next round of tests starting on Wednesday include efficiency runs such as urban and citycycle.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Top speed of 200 km/h, with acceleration of 0 – 100 km/h in 6 seconds. Impressed?

But what if I tell you it’s a battery driven sports car?

The Electric RaceAbout (ERA) is a project by Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, which ITW Plexus has been supporting for the past couple of years.

The challenge for the project team was to create the next generation battery driven sports car. The ERA has been designed to adopt the latest technology of electric powertrain to become a state of art battery driven electric-vehicle and manufactured using Carbon Fiber monocoque and features 4 electric drives (one motor per wheel).

A full-bloodied sports car with extremely low energy consumption and no emissions, will really open a new era for motoring enthusiasts.

The project team is now in the USA to participate in the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE, which will be awarded in October 2010. You can follow their progress via our blog.

Monday, April 19, 2010

JEC 2010 Review

JEC is one of the eagerly awaited exhibitions in the composites industry with hundreds of companies globally exhibiting. The exhibition did seem quieter than last year. This could be put that down to the effects of the recession or that many of the Resin manufacturers did not attend as they did in 2009.

Overall a good show, demonstrating different applications within the composite industry, some of which can be seen below.

On arrival we found ourselves being drawn to the Lamborghini. Italy was the honorary country so Lamborghini had the Tevatron on display.

                    Lamborghini Tevatron

Having spent most of the day visiting the stands, we did come across some interesting applications using composites in particular the soccer shoes, manufactured using Tepex by Bond Laminates.

                It’s raining shoes

Jean-Charles ‘It’s a tough job, but someones gota do it’

                    Mike Howard and Alex Grazia

As always, the Innovation showcase had on display some impressive applications, a few of them include;

                Motomare ski boat by Krauss Maffiei

  Composite Chassis Carbon Safety cell for a race car by Sora Composites

Mountain spring on a conventional mountaineering boot, a binding for turning and an ultra light carbon ski used by famous Skiers and Alpinist, by Alp Control

                      Composite Kayak by Kiln

It’s the one time of the year in which the majority of our distributors gather at one place. It was a pleasure to have met them all and reflected on what was happening in the marketplace and to discuss the show.

Although the volcanic ash is playing havoc with travel plans we hope you had a safe journey back.

ITW Plexus will be exhibiting at the JEC in 2011, so hope to see you then.