The Scientific Technical Committee (Electro-Physical & Chemical Processes) STC E held two meetings in 2015: Paris, France, February 20 and Cape Town, South Africa, August 29. The first meeting was chaired by STC E chairman Prof. A.P. Malshe. The second meeting was chaired by P. Bartolo since the chairman was not able to attend the meeting.

The scientific/technical presentations and discussions at the Paris meeting included “Testing of swim wear coating” (M. Lanzetta), “Fundamental study on nano 3D printer using evanescent light energy” (S. Takahashi), “Aerosol jet printing enabling micro-stereolithography based additive manufacturing on arbitrary shaped substrates” (L. Overmeyer), “An Experimental Approach for Quantification of Fluid Dynamics in Laser Metal Welding” (F. Tenner), “Extrusion-based Additive Manufacturing of Silicone” (A. Shih), “Laser Ablation of Alumina Grinding Wheels” (A. Fortunato) and “Piezoelectrically driven multi-axis vibration assisted micro EDM” (J. Yan).

During the August meeting (Cape Town), the following presentations were given and discussed: “A Multiscale Modeling Approach to Fast Prediction of Part Distortion and Residual Stress in Selective Laser Melting” (Y. Guo), “Freeze-Form Extrusion Fabrication of Ceramic-Metal Functionally Graded Materials” (M. Leu), “Structural transformations in polycrystalline diamond and poly-crystalline cubic boron nitride composite materials as a result of pulsed laser ablation” (D. Axinte), “Miniaturization of Electrical Discharge Machining Using High Electric Resistance Electrode” (T. Koyano), “Effect Pulsed Laser Polishing Parameters can have on Hardness of S7 Tool Steel” (F. Pfefferkorn) and “Comprehensive Surface Topo- graphy Characterization of EDM Processes” (A. Klink).

During the Paris and Cape Town meeting, the progress of the given and up-coming keynote papers were discussed: Keynote 2015 “Micro additive manufacturing using ultra short laser pulses” (B. Huis in’t Veld, L. Overmeyer, M. Schmidt, K. Wegener, A. Malshe, P. Bartolo), Keynote 2016 “Shaping of engineering ceramics by electro, chemical and physical processes” (E. Ferraris, J. Vleugels, D. Bourell, Y. Guo, J.-P. Kruth, B. Lauwers), Keynote 2016 “Machining of engineering ceramics by electro physical processes” (E. Ferraris, B. Lauwers, J.-P. Kruth) and Keynote 2017 “Materials for Additive Manufacturing” (D. Bourell, A. Clare, G. Levy, J.-P. Kruth, D. Rosen).

During the STC E meeting and the following Cross-STC meeting in Cape Town, the progress of the Cross-STC keynote paper in 2017 has been shown. The tentative title of this paper is “Laser based Additive Manufacturing – challenges and opportunities” (M. Schmidt, B. Huis in’t Veld, M. Merklein, K. Wegener, D. Dimitrov).

During both meetings, the progress on the organization of ISEM XVIII (to be held in Tokyo, April 2016) was given. Furthermore, the STC E members approved in Cape Town that future ISEM conferences will be held every two years. Additionally, the members agreed on the next ISEM conference in 2018 in Bilbao.

During the STC E paper session at the GA in Cape Town, 14 papers were presented followed by discussions (questions and answers). All 14 papers were included in Vol. 1 of the CIRP Annals. Paper contents were related to the following fields: Laser Beam Machining (5), ECM/EDM (7), Arc Manufacturing (1) and Lasers in Additive Manufacturing (1). The keynote paper “Micro additive manufacturing using ultra short laser pulses” was presented by M. Schmidt during the internal STC E paper session.

Report prepared by Prof. Michael SCHMIDT (CIRP STC E Secretary)