Witten by Dr. Lars Helldahl / Kagaku-analys AB (SUGA’s representative in Europe)
I will here write down a few comments and observations from the conference held 6-8 November.
We had a booth with a poster showing the SPS 2000 and a PC running a PPT show continuously. The presentations were held in one Theatre only, so all participants (around 115 persons) were together all the time. Coffee and lunch breaks were served in the exhibition area together with Posters. These were displayed all the time and no special time was set aside for Posters, but we were expected to go around and look during breaks.
Initially professor Christoph Laurent held an introduction where he commemorated the 20 years anniversary of the first SPS in France. In his talk he reminded that they got help from Mats Nygren to get training on the SPS during 2 weeks after installation. I was also acknowledged for my contribution to the purchase and arrangements during installation. He introduced me to the participants, and I stood up to show my face.
During the conference there was a competition of best presentation among 15 PhD students, and I was part of the committee to select the winner (which held me fixed in the Theatre almost all time during all lectures). Me and Mirva-san from Stockholm University were present on the podium during prize announcement. I introduced a brief history about Mats-san, saying something like this “….you all know since the introduction yesterday that Mats was an excellent researcher and a pioneer in SPS in Europe. He was also a very good teacher, and me and Mirva here can tell about that side of his achievements. I was his first PhD student to supervise, starting my PhD in 1977, and Mirva was his last, presenting her thesis in 2010. So, we span 33 years of dedicated teaching and about 15-20 PhD that he supervised….”. Again, it is important to show the connection with Mats and the SPS history.
The lady winner, Vijaya Bhasker is actually a PhD student in Isabelle Lafitt-Montat`s laboratory, Blois, and is working on the SPS I installed in 2017 (about) – this was also mentioned by Isabelle-san when she, as the session chairman, introduced my presentation.
The main research direction now, judged from the No of contributions of the subject, is without doubt, additive manufacturing. This normally include 3D printing of green bodies of metal or ceramic, and some advanced calculations of initial shapes considering a 3 dimension shrinkage during sintering even if the Force is applied axially. Many talked about the kind of binder to use, and how to get rid of it either before or during the sintering process. This research is done within the large and established Universities (Bordeaux, Toulouse, Paris and in Germany and also Sheffield in UK and other countries like Poland) and large “companies” like Sintermat and (smaller) like Norimet (22 persons now) where both Governments and really big companies are contributing to the budgets.
Other areas is High temperature ceramics, B4C, SiC and such, and Electrothermal materials. One interesting and impressive research was presented by Vijaya Bhasker (the winner) from Blois, and regarding Phonon switches for super computers.
My presentation was included in the session with Technical Talks, which I was not happy with. I would have preferred that it was in the Academic sessions. But….OK. I was not doing the presentation as a commercial talk about Suga SPS – the only mentioning of Suga was on this first slide above. After the presentation Isabelle-san asked me about the FW wave form, and then I showed the graph that we use in the article. So, it is not included in the PPT I enclose, but was shown and discussed during the questions. Later on I spoke to Isabelle-san and asked if she thought that the Raman was too unfamiliar for this audience, but she believes it was well understood. Good to hear.
The other presentations in the session was FUJI (Japan), GeniCore (Poland), Dr. Fritsch (Germany), FCT (Germany), Sheffield Univ ROYCE (company name). These talked about their line up of machines and showed pages from catalogues, and not many – if any – applications.
Our friend, California Nanotechnologies (Melnyk), talked most about cryo milling, and showed their range of equipment (including Dr. Fritsch SPS). A Dr Sicard from one of the Universiteis talked about AI, which was appreciated by Besira-san.
We met many old customer and contacts, like Igor Veremchuk, who used to work with Juri Grin in Max Planck, but since many years moved to Helmholtz Institute in Dresden. He also gave an interesting presentation.
We met several persons from the groups in Toulouse and Bordeaux, people we know since many years.
There were no really new leads for purchase coming up at the booth. Most of the research is done in the established universities and these semi-governmental companies, and it seems to me that the capacity now installed in Europe is enough to meet the demand. I suppose many – both researchers and potential companies – are waiting for a breakthrough in this additive manufacturing, 3D printing to set up the first industrial production based on SPS. Then there will be a competition in designing a good and economic production line for such an application. Of course, to be able to compete there, we must acquire some experience with this techniques and do some kind of demonstration. It is of course much easier for a company that has been doing all the stages of process development to also sell the final equipment.
On the whole, I think it was a good conference – we could reinforce and remind about our long experience and dedication to the SPS technique, combined with an ambition to develop it further.
From the left: Dr. Claude Estournes/CNRS、Vijaya Bhasker/University de Tours Blois(Prize winner), Dr. Mirva Eriksson/Stockholm University, Dr. Lars Helldahl/Kagaku Analys AB(writer of this report), Nicolas Albar/CIRIMAT(Prize winner)
