STC E - 2011 Annual Report

The Scientific Technical Committee (Electro-Physical & Chemical Processes) STC “E” held two meetings in 2011: Paris, France, January 26-28 and Budapest, Hungary, August 21-27. The meetings were chaired by STC “E” Chairman Prof. B. Lauwers.

The scientific/technical presentations and discussions at the Paris meeting included “Modeling Spark Distribution and its Integration into Process Control in Wire-EDM” (B. Ravani), “Thermal Characterization of Powder-Based Laser Sintering of Nylon-12” (D. Bourell), “Dual beam warm laser shot peening” (G. Tani), “Measuring Surface Nano-Structures by Surface Plasmon Resonance” (H. Hocheng), “Sub-Diffraction Limited Multi-Photon Microsphere Near-Field Nanostructuring” (M. Schmidt), “Laser de-coating of tooling to facilitate re-use” (L. Li).
    
During the August meeting (Budapest), the following presentations were given and discussed: “Laser additive manufacturing of aluminium alloys” (M. Schmidt), “Direct Patterning in Sub-surface of Stainless Steel Using Laser Pulses” (H. Zheng), “Current EDM and ECM research activities at WZL RWTH Aachen University” (A. Klink), “Extending the field of applications of Electric Discharge Surface Modification” (R. Perez) “WEDM at high relative speeds” (E. Weingärtner), “Precision ECM of High Pressure Common Rail Diesel Fuel System Component Mini-Features” (M.B. Grant), “Fabrication of Micropatterned Energy-Saving Sunlight Guide” (H. Hocheng), “Pulsed Laser Micro Polishing of Metals: Predictive Model and Experimental Results“ (F. Pfefferkorn) and “Efficient Thermal Management of Moulds and Dies – a Reality in Practical Terms” (D. Dimitrov).

During the Paris and Budapest meeting, the progress on the up-coming keynote papers were discussed: keynote 2011: “Laser Nano-Technology – State of Art and Challenges (L. Li), keynote 2012: “Electro-Physical and Chemical Processes in Bio-manufacturing” (P. Bartolo) and keynote 2013 “Modelling of Electrical Machining Processes” (S. Hinduja, M. Kunieda). In addition, proposals for 2014 were discussed.

The election of CIRP members (related to STC E) to serve as associate editor for the CIRP JMST journal were discussed during the Paris meeting. Finally, two members have been proposed during the August meeting: Prof. Kunieda and Prof. Rajurkar (both past STC E chairman’s).

Finally, an update on the progress on the organization of ISEM XVII (to be held in Leuven, April 2013) was given by Prof. Lauwers.

During the STC E paper session at the GA in Budapest, 16 papers were presented followed by discussions (questions and answers). All 17 papers were included in Vol. 1 of the CIRP Annals. Paper contents were related to the following fields: Laser (3), EDM (4), ECM (4), RPT/RPM (5). The keynote paper “Laser Nano-Manufacturing – State of the Art and Challenges” (presented by Prof. L. Li) was given during the internal paper session.