On to Ghent

metal-powder.net October 2006 MPR 3

editorial

Fresh from their experiences at thePM World Congress in Korea, PMconference goers will be round-ing off a busy summer/autumn

schedule with the European conferenceand exhibition, this year being staged inGhent, Belgium.

For the road-weary delegate, Ghent iseasy on the eye and the foot, with cafesclustering the medieval centre of the cityaround the canals and wharves whichcontinue to be a key to Ghent’s prosperi-ty. The central area is a showcase ofmediaeval Flemish wealth and commer-cial success, a well maintained face for a

modern city that continues to prosperfrom the Flemish virtues of hard workcombined with commercial nous. TheGhent-Terneuzen canal gives the city andits industrial hinterland access to sea-going vessels and international markets.Not as big as Antwerp, but bigger thanBruges, Ghent has managed to maintainits long-standing ranking as one ofBelgium’s leading cities while keeping upwith the times.

Euro PM2006 will be a somewhatsmaller gathering than is usual for theEuropean Powder Metallurgy Association’sannual bash, but that is because it focuseson hard materials and diamond tooling.The EPMA gives prominence to hard mate-rials every three years, recognition that ifthe businesses that make up the sectordeal in significantly smaller volumes thanmainstream PM, they more than make upfor that in terms of strategic importanceand profitability. It is estimated that hardmaterials – tungsten carbide, cobalt andthe like – generate around a third of thePM business’s total turnover in Europe.Once the turnover and profitability of dia-mond tooling is added in, that figure risesto around half.

Hard materials are essentially thewear-resistant materials vital in manyareas of engineering. Tungsten wasrecognised as a valuable tooling mater-ial in Germany in the 1920s, but in thepast 30 years the range of hard materi-als available to design and productionengineers has broadened considerablyfrom the tungsten-cobalt hardmetals toembrace composites of hardmetals andcarbonitrides, advanced ceramics andsuperhard polycrystalline diamondmaterials – many tailor-made for spe-cific applications.

Hard materials and metal workingtooling are areas where Chinese influ-ence is being felt right across theboard. China is estimated to have con-trol of around 70 per cent of theworld’s tungsten reserves and hasdeveloped a formidable expertise of itsown in manufacturing metal workingtools and materials as a result. Thecannier hard materials operators havebeen quick to establish themselves inChina, not least to ensure futureaccess to raw materials reserves.

Applications for diamond-impreg-nated tooling have increased consider-ably, but demand is very high in thestone and construction sectors, wherethey are used for sawing, drilling andpolishing. There is great interest indeveloping substrates and systemsthat provide toughness while protect-ing their diamond “cargo” from break-down through the heat generated byfriction.

But the mainstream is by no meansignored. Powder injection mouldingmakes up a substantial percentage ofthe conference presentations, and,indeed this important area is the sub-ject of the first plenary session whereBASF’s Martin Bloemacher will reviewthe “current state of the art” of PIM,questioning whether it has fulfilled itspast potential and where the economicand technical trends lie for the future.

See you there.

Richard FeltonEDITOR

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