Heat Treat Today publishes eight print magazines a year and included in each is a letter from the publisher, Doug Glenn. This letter first appeared in Heat Treat Today’s December 2022 Medical and Energy Heat Treat Issue print edition.
Doug Glenn Publisher and Founder Heat Treat Today
It’s roughly noon on November 8, 2022, and I’m sitting outside Starbucks in downtown Beaver, Pennsylvania, about 40 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh, enjoying an unseasonably mid-70s, pure blue sky day. I live another 40 minutes away near New Castle, PA, but I’m here in Beaver to see the newest Glenn grandchild and stopped at Starbucks to buy a triple-shot decaf espresso – the mid-afternoon drink of choice for my wife — which the barista’s have affectionately dubbed “Why Bother.” (Think about it . . . three shots of DECAF espresso. Why bother?)
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There’s plenty of human activity here in downtown Beaver. People walking and talking. Many conversations and warm greetings — handholding, smiling, kids with parents, cars passing, movement and activity everywhere.
This moment in Beaver reminds me of the Altstadt in Dusseldorf, Germany in June of any given year. Aldstadt, which means “old town,” is the hub of activity in the evening after each of the five days of Thermprocess, the world’s largest heat treating trade show held every four years at the Messe (fairgrounds) in Dusseldorf, Germany. In fact, walking and eating dinner in the Aldstadt is one of the highlights of participating in Thermprocess.
If you’ve never heard of Thermprocess and you’re involved in the heat treating industry, you need to know about it. It is one of four co-located metals trade shows held in mid-June every four years in Dusseldorf. It is an event to behold, and one highly recommended by the author of this column. In addition to Thermprocess, there is GIFA (a foundry event), NEWCAST (a casting event), and METEC (a metallurgical event). All-in-all, over 70,000 visitors and over 2,000 exhibitors flood the Messe every four years.
Düsseldorf, Germany Source: Unsplash.com
In 2023, Thermprocess is being held from June 12-16, and I would like to personally invite you to join me in Dusseldorf. As the largest heat treat event in the Western world (and arguably, the ENTIRE world), Thermprocess offers North American participants an opportunity to expand their view of what is happening in the heat treating/thermal processing world. And a broader perspective is exactly what we need. For those of you who have ever attended one of the larger manufacturing events here in North America, IMTS for example, Thermprocess and her three sister shows are MUCH bigger and better.
The Messe, where the event is located, is easily twice to three times the size of McCormick Place in Chicago, where IMTS is located. It would easily take you 20 minutes to walk from one end of the Messe to the other. During the full week it is open, the Messe is packed with metals-related exhibits and activities. It is not humanly possible to see all that is available to be seen.
Heat Treat Today is encouraging North American heat treat suppliers who market internationally to exhibit. We are putting together a group of like-minded North American exhibitors to join us. Assuming we get enough companies to join us, we will exhibit close to one another and share resources to make it more affordable for all concerned. We’ll share things like food & beverage, interpreters (if needed), and meeting rooms. By the way, unlike many North American shows, it is not unusual for people to actually strike deals and sign contracts at Thermprocess.
If you’re not a heat treat industry supplier, we encourage you, as a consumer of heat treat products, services, or supplies, to attend the event. The technology that you will see will be eye-opening. Please let us know if we can be helpful getting you to Dusseldorf in June 2023.
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Held only once every four years, THERMPROCESS is the largest heat treat show in the world with thousands in attendance.
Brace yourselves for 2023 THERMPROCESS, in Düsseldorf, Germany; the world’s most important platform for the presentation of highly innovative technology and environmental concepts for industrial thermal processing plants.
THERMPROCESS is part of the tradeshow quartet that happens every four years in Dusseldorf. The other events in the quartet are GIFA, METEC, and NEWCAST. Climate neutrality by 2050 means that the industry faces an extreme transformation that will be discussed at the Düsseldorf trade fair quartet, including the challenges that the sectors must overcome and the innovations that machinery and plant manufacturers will offer to enable climate solutions.
Lastly, North American heat treat suppliers: If you have any interest in exhibiting, reach out to Heat TreatToday SOON, preferably NOW, to reserve your specially priced booth in an exclusive North American Exhibitor Group. If there is enough participation, Heat TreatToday will provide a centrally located Resource Center where participating companies can come for food & drink, meeting rooms, some North American fellowship, and language interpreters. Essentially, this is all the perks of a big company without the expense! Costs for your booth will range from $9,000 to $12,000. Contact Doug Glenn at doug@heattreattoday.com or via phone at 724-923-8089 for more exhibitor info.
Sometimes our editors find items that are not exactly "heat treat" but do deal with interesting developments in one of our key markets: aerospace, automotive, medical, energy, or general manufacturing. To celebrate getting to the "fringe" of the weekend, Heat Treat Today presents today’s Heat Treat Fringe Fridaypress article to prepare you for the global conversations you can expect at the international metallurgy trade fair quartet GIFA, METEC, THERMPROCESS, and NEWCAST. The theme? Foundry 4.0.
"From ArcelorMittal to Thyssenkrupp, digitization has arrived in the steel industry. Drivers are the desire to improve margins in existing business and increasingly the challenges of decarbonization. It is not disruptive new business models that are on the agenda of steel mills, but primarily improvements in earnings and an expansion of services. New digitalization solutions - from the transformation of the blast furnace to the vision of the autonomous steel mill, from digital melting operations to Foundry 4.0 - will be a focal theme at the upcoming metallurgy trade fairs GIFA, METEC, THERMPROCESS and NEWCAST, to be held from June 12 - 16, 2023 in Düsseldorf, Germany."
This guest column was provided by Gerd Krause, Mediakonzept in Düsseldorf, Germany. HTT is a media partner for the THERMPROCESS quadrant of the show. Give it a read and then email editor@heattreattoday.com if you have an op-ed or guest column that you would like to submit to Heat Treat Today!
In the highly automated steel industry data have long played a pivotal role. Take ThyssenKrupp Steel, for example: the hot strip mill in Duisburg alone not only processes about 16,500 tons of steel slabs but also the data of more than 1.2 billion measurements. Terms like Big Data, Digital Twin and Machine Learning are today just as familiar to metallurgists as tapping and slab casting. Artificial intelligence (AI) specialists and App programmers join traditional workers such as blast-furnace and hot rolling mill operators. Digital twins map production from start to finish and can be used for all steps in the value chain of products, plants and services alongside the real steel mill. One key objective is to analyze product and machine data across various process steps. With the help of Data Analytics material characteristics such as thickness fluctuations, roughness or stiffness can be forecast precisely and tolerances can be adhered to more closely. To this end, thousands and thousands of sensors capture the quality and production data across the entire flat steel process chain. This data base forms the basis for controlling and analyzing manufacturing processes in real time. In ThyssenKrupp Steel’s No. 8 hot-dip coating line in Dortmund the data analytics results are used to generate mathematical models for controlling the skin pass mill. The data model controls the line in such a way that the aspired roughness values of the steel strips are reached and the operation mode can be re-adjusted online if needed. This opens up new service options for steel producers. Commenting on this Lothar Patberg, Head of Innovation at Thyssenkrupp Steel said: “In future, customers would be able to not only track the current status of their orders. They could also obtain selected quality data from manufacturing with a view to adjusting their own processes before the coil is delivered.”
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The technological shift to CO2-free production with hydrogen and renewable energies has provided added momentum to the uses of digital technologies. According to consultancy Accenture, in industrial manufacturing up to 61 megatons of CO2 could be saved by 2030 through digitalization. Metallurgy plant builders such as SMS, Primetals and Danieli have long identified this potential: to strengthen their own companies but above all to open up new lines of business.
SMS digital: The big players develop the market
A pioneer in digitalization exhibiting at METEC 2023 is the Düsseldorf-based SMS group. Automation technology has formed part of this metallurgy plant builder’s DNA for many years. Technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Digital Twins were used by their engineers in steel mill development long before Industry 4.0 hit the headlines. While in the past individual divisions like the rolling mill were automated, digitalization today connects the entire production line from the blast furnace to the finished product on all levels. SMS was among the first in this industry to identify the potential digitalization holds for developing new business lines and established the start-up SMS digital in 2017. What started with 10 members of staff in a backyard, is now the leading software provider for metallurgy: SMS Digital GmbH with more than 350 specialists employed worldwide. As Chief Digital Officer on the board of SMS group Katja Windt, a former university professor with a PhD in engineering, has been responsible for the key areas of digital transformation – at her own company and with customers. The SMS Chief Digital Officer views the 150 years of process know-how in the metallurgical sector as a key advantage over competitors, or potential new entrants such as the digital champions Google or Amazon that have long had their sights on the industry. Digitalization for process optimization and energy management also forms an essential part of the new business lines of the SMS group. As a global player for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and the circular economy the plant builder has successfully invested in decarbonization and recycling technologies – ranging from climate-neutral steel production based on hydrogen, battery recycling and urban-mining solutions for reclaiming precious metals from electrical scrap to plants for producing green syn-gas and synthetic fuels.
Big River Steel: Learning steel mills are just the beginning
Digitalization focuses on the steel industry. At METEC 2019, the International Metallurgical Trade Fair with Congresses, the plant builder was able to present the world’s first “learning steel mill” together with Big River Steel. The mill built by SMS in the U.S. and digitalized and fitted with artificial intelligence (AI) in cooperation with partner Noodle.ai , is operated in the most resource- and energy-efficient way possible today. The AI by Noodle.ai analyses historical data and in part high-frequency signal series captured by more than 50,000 sensors. In addition to the steel mill’s data the AI platform also uses external data sources that capture and predict manufacturing processes, and even propose corrective measures. This means artificial intelligence helps to maximize the yield, improve product quality and eliminate safety risks. Huge data volumes from which AI generates knowledge allowing BRS to produce high-quality steel products at a lower cost and faster. The learning steel mill in the USA is just the beginning. For Digital Director Windt, the objective is self-controlling production: a steel or aluminum mill that runs autonomously with the help of learning algorithms. The key product for digitalization in the SM digital building block is the so-called Data Factory that collects and edits sensor data. Depending on custom requirements and desired performance increase, a wide variety of applications can be hooked up to this software platform. In conventional production, finished products are inspected for defects. If the goods are defective, the search for the cause begins and the source of the defect must be eliminated. In Industry 4.0 logic, continuous monitoring of production prevents errors before they occur. This saves time and money.
Customers do not to necessarily need to buy new plant technology for the service. As a new business model SMS also offers “Equipment-as-a-Service.” “Customers conclude a service contract with us for a component, such as part of a rolling mill or a continuous casting line,” explains Windt. So the plant builder does not sell the equipment but the customer pays for its operation and the digital applications used.
The power of digitalization has become evident during the Covid pandemic if not before. With the help of its AR SMS was able to commission steel mills remotely, i.e. without service engineers being on site as was the case before.
Smart Steel Technology: Start-up ready to attack
Smart Steel Technology (SST) promises to reduce energy consumption and the emission of climate gases such as carbon dioxide in steel production by means of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) Established in 2017 by mathematician Dr. Falk-Florian Henrich in Berlin, this start-up has set out to optimize processes on all levels. To this end the steel industry is set to change from control-based production to AI-based manufacturing.
Steel producers transform conventional manufacturing processes towards higher energy savings and CO2 reductions. With a gradual changeover from coal to hydrogen as a reducing agent, carbon dioxide emissions are already reduced at the blast furnace. Add to this new process pathways such as direct reduction using natural gas initially and later hydrogen as part of the decarbonization route for steel production. This is why steel producers need solutions to assess and control the CO2-efficiency of all production routes as well as their carbon and energy footprints broken down for each individual steel product. The pressure to do so emanates not least from customers. In the automotive industry the carbon footprint is increasingly becoming a sourcing criterion for steel products. “Precise energy and CO2 data allow steel producers to charge for their conversion efforts and complete audits successfully. Automated CO2 and energy analyses with AI-based models are the key to this,” says Henrich. With SST’s AI-based software packages, he explains, it is possible to precisely document and trace back the energy consumption and CO2 emission for every flat or strip product. AI considers numerous factors impacting energy efficiency such as raw material quality, product mix and maintenance.
In addition to companies such as Feralpi and Vallourec, SST CEO Henrich was able to convince the world's largest steel producer ArcelorMittal of the strength of his AI solutions. Example Eisenhüttenstadt: here AI and ML methods managed to improve the surface quality of high-end steel grades for the automotive industry by more than 50%. The AI software is not only used to forecast the surface quality but also to prevent surface defects from forming. After the successful trial run in Eisenhüttenstadt ArcelorMittal has also installed software from the SST family at sites in Bremen, Hamburg and Duisburg.
Fero Labs: Changing raw material composition in real time
U.S. start-up Fero Labs also seeks to score points with decarbonization and green steel, as Head of Business Unit Europe Tim Eschert confirms. The AI software by Fero Labs makes it possible, he explains, to change the raw material batch composition in real time and thus significantly reduce the probability of rejects in the manufacturing process: “At the Brazilian steel producers Gerdau with a medium production volume we achieve some 9% savings a year.”
The international metallurgy trade fair quartet GIFA, METEC, THERMPROCESS and NEWCAST are part of the “The Bright World of Metals” portfolio and will be held in Düsseldorf, Germany from June 12 – 16, 2023. www.tbwom.com
About the Author: Gerd Krause is the Mediakonzept for Düsseldorf, Germany
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Forming the “The Bright World of Metals”, the four trade fairs GIFA, METEC, THERMPROCESS, and NEWCAST will take place from June 25 – 29, 2019 at the fairgrounds in Düsseldorf, Germany, where the latest advancements for foundry technology, metallurgy, thermo-process technology, and castings will be on display.
Excellent exhibitor registration figures for the “Bright World of Metals”
About 2,100 exhibitors from all over the world will showcase their innovations at the quartet of trade fairs for foundry and metallurgical technology.
“For the first time in the more than 60-year history, we had more than 2,000 exhibitors at the 2015 staging. Therefore I am particularly pleased that we have succeeded in maintaining this high level and in confirming the dominant position of our four trade fairs,” said Friedrich Kehrer, Global Portfolio Director Metals and Flow Technology at Messe Düsseldorf.
The exhibitors will present the entire spectrum of foundry technology, castings, metallurgy and thermo process technology in twelve halls. As the leading trade fairs in their respective sectors, GIFA, METEC, THERMPROCESS and NEWCAST 2019 will cover the most important trends – including additive manufacturing (with a special show in Hall 3 and the “Metal 3D Printing” conference on June 26) and Industry 4.0 as well as lightweight structures in the automotive industry. The international reach of the four trade fairs is expected to be very broad again this year. Usually, more than 50% of the 78,000 trade visitors from overseas and other European countries.
ecoMetals & ecoMetals Trails
The ecoMetals campaign by Messe Düsseldorf is an established and successful feature at the “Bright World of Metals”. The emphasis this year will again be on environmentally sound operation and production in the sector, with resource and energy efficiency, climate protection and innovative processes and products as the main topic. About 30 exhibitors will participate under the heading “ecoMetals@Bright World of Metals” and the “ecoMetals Trails” will offer visitors guided tours.
Bright World of Metals: 4 Trade Fairs Under One Roof
GIFA, METEC, THERMPROCESS and NEWCAST are independent trade fairs but together form the “Bright World of Metals”. At GIFA, the International Foundry Trade Fair and Technical Forum, about 900 exhibitors from 47 countries will display their products in Halls 10 to 13 and 15 to 17. Participating world market leaders will include Bühler AG (Switzerland), ASK Chemicals GmbH (Germany), FOSECO (Germany), Hüttenes Albertus (Germany), Loramendi S. Coop (Spain) and Vesuvius GmbH (Germany). There will also be large country group exhibits from Italy and China.
NEWCAST is fully booked
NEWCAST, the 5th International Trade Fair for Castings with the Newcast Forum, is fully booked for its 5th anniversary. Some 400 exhibitors from more than 30 nations will demonstrate in Halls 13 and 14 how global the production of castings has become. Market leaders such as Finoba Automotive GmbH (Germany), GOM GmbH (Germany), Gießerei Heunisch (Germany), Eisenwerk Brühl (Germany), Kimura Foundry Co. Ltd. (Japan), Kutes Metal Inc. (Turkey) and Waupaca Foundry (U.S.) will participate. The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials/IFAM (Germany) will also be represented. The foundry associations from Croatia, Mexico, and Hungary will be at NEWCAST for the first time.
METEC 2019: New Record for Its 10th Anniversary
METEC, the 10th International Metallurgical Trade Fair, will feature the large plant manufacturers. With 530 from 34 countries so far, METEC is setting a new exhibitor record this year. Inteco (Austria), Primetals Technologies Ltd. (UK), RHI Magnesita (Austria), SMS Group (Germany) und Tenova S.P.A. (Italy) are among the exhibitors. Forged components will be on show at METEC for the first time. These were previously part of NEWCAST, but due to their increased importance they are better suited to the metallurgy trade fair.
Industry Leaders at THERMPROCESS
With 300 exhibitors and 50% foreign participation, THERMPROCESS, the 12th International Trade Fair and Symposium for Thermo Process Technology, is the top event for international equipment suppliers. This is reflected in the list of exhibitors including many of the industry leaders: Aichelin Holding GmbH (Germany), Ajax Tocco Magnethermic GmbH (Germany), Andritz Maerz GmbH (Germany), Honeywell Thermal Solutions (Germany), Inductotherm Group (U.S.) and ITG Induktionsanlagen GmbH (Germany).
For further information on visiting or exhibiting at GIFA, METEC, THERMPROCESS, or NEWCAST 2019, contact Messe Düsseldorf North America, 150 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 2920, Chicago, IL 60601. Telephone: (312) 781-5180; Fax: (312) 781-5188; E-mail: info@mdna.com. Visit the web site http://www.mdna.com, subscribe to the blog at http://blog.mdna.com, or follow on Twitter http://twitter.com/Industrial_MDNA
Heat Treat Today publishes eight print magazines a year and included in each is a letter from the publisher, Doug Glenn. This letter first appeared in Heat Treat Today’s December 2022 Medical and Energy Heat Treat Issue print edition.
If you’re not a heat treat industry supplier, we encourage you, as a consumer of heat treat products, services, or supplies, to attend the event. The technology that you will see will be eye-opening. Please let us know if we can be helpful getting you to Dusseldorf in June 2023.
Find heat treating products and services when you search on Heat Treat Buyers Guide.com
