Editorial

 Every two years, the specialised international trade fairs Forma tool, Plagkem, Graf&Pack and Foundry bring to one place the most innovative and R&D-oriented companies and individuals. They are the ones who use their knowledge, new technologies and material processing to lay a path to the future. The four fairs will be taking place at the Celje fairgrounds from April 16–19 2013.
The fair organizer Celjski sejem, d.d. anticipates to be able to present the best global trademarks in the topical areas covered by the fairs. They expect to see several innovations, useful information and the latest professional achievements. Those are also the main arguments for visiting the fair, which have been listed by the business visitors in addition to the possibility of making new business arrangements. 

 The Technical museum of Slovenia in Bistra hosted the third Days of Mechanical Engineering in the last week of September. The event aims to present mechanical engineering as well as the purpose and the relevance of studying mechanical engineering in the present time to a wide audience, especially elementary and secondary school youth. The event, organised by the museum staff in cooperation with the laboratories and management of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Ljubljana, has attracted a record number of visitors – more than 2100.   

 Hella Saturnus Slovenija, a developer and manufacturer of lighting equipment, has been boosting investments into automation for the last ten years, integrating it with other technologies. The result are integrated manufacturing systems, which are not only technically refined, but also economically efficient.
Hella Saturnus Slovenija, d.o.o., a developer and manufacturer of lighting equipment for the automotive industry, has specialised in the manufacture of headlamps and auxiliary lamps, such as fog lamps, daytime running lights, cornering lamps and combinations thereof for passenger vehicles. The activities of Hella Saturnus Slovenija are based on a rich tradition of factory Saturnus, which began operations more than 90 year ago as a metalworking factory, specialised in the manufacture of metal packaging.   

 Siemens PLM Software has introduced the RobotExpert, a new intuitive and user-friendly solution for robot simulation and programming. It has been developed for small and mid-size companies to cut the non-productive time and improve the productivity of robots in the industry.
RobotExpert supports various robot applications, including pick-and-place, arc welding, polishing, adhesive application and others. Siemens PLM software in this way complemented its offer of industry-leading software for digital manufacturing, automation and simulation Tecnomatix®. 

 WITTMANN BATTENFELD has responded to the increasing importance of micro parts in medical technology with MicroPower, an injection moulding machine model specially developed for high-precision production of extremely small parts. The all-electric MicroPower – available with clamping forces of 5 and 15 t – is attracting attention from the medical industry due to its speed, its extraordinary cost-efficiency and absolute process reliability.
The new generation of injection moulding machines has an innovative two-step injection unit, consisting of a screw and a plunger with a shot volume ranging from 0.05 to 4 cm³. The melt that is injected through this injection aggregate is uniform in regard to its temperature, resulting in the highest quality parts with stable production processes and short cycle times. Because of the short cycle times and the machine’s low levels of material and energy consumption, as well as comprehensive peripheral equipment specifically geared to the production of micro parts, the MicroPower is extremely cost-efficient.   

 ENGEL AUSTRIA and CANTONI have set a new standard for process integration. The inject2blow method, which the two companies developed together, combines the injection moulding and blow moulding processes in one mould on one injection moulding machine and significantly reduces time and costs in the manufacture of cosmetic, drug, and food containers by doing so.
Italian manufacture CANTONI from Abbadia Lariana manufactures wide-necked jars on a 90-tonne clamping force ENGEL victory injection moulding machine in a 2+2-cavity mould with a cycle time of under 14 seconds. Traditional methods simply cannot match the production efficiency of inject2blow. Preforms normally have to be made using injection moulding first and then subjected to a second process on a blow moulding machine before they become a final product. 

 The Institute of Metals and Technology in Ljubljana boasts with three accredited laboratories – Laboratory of Pressure Metrology, Laboratory of Metallography and Laboratory of Mechanical Testing. The Laboratory of Pressure Metrology, the holder of national reference standard for pressure, is led by dr. Janez Šetina. Vesna Vilčnik 

 The last Olympic Games will also be remembered by the most extensive use of information and communication technologies so far, as well by a mass use of digital technologies to distribute the games around the world.
The Olympic Games, organised every fourth summer, are the largest single event in the world, also based on the most extensive use of information and communication technologies. The Olympic ICT activities take place for approximately six years, from the selection of the host city to the conclusion of paraolympic games, which begin two weeks after the »main« games. A similar situation is found in the considerably less complex Winter Olympic Games. The planning, design, preparation, installation and management of ICT systems, solutions and services, which collect the data and distribute it at around the world, is a task for the company ATOS, the official global partner of International Olympic Committee.   

 It is little known that Rio de Janeiro, a city with six million people that has already started preparing for the next Summer Olympics, will soon be the leading smart city in the world.
More than half of the human population lives in cities, and this share is anticipated to exceed 60 percent by 2030. Investment into technologies for smart cities worldwide will increase fifth-fold in six years, from 8,1 billion dollars in 2012 to 39,5 billion in 2016. ABI Research estimates 102 smart city projects are currently underway, encompassing six dimensions: economy, environment, public administration, lifestyle, traffic and community. Most of them, 38, are located in Europe, 35 in North America, 21 in Asia and Pacific region, 6 in Middle East and Africa, and 2 in South America. 

 Today, FANUC is the leading global manufacturer of factory automation, with more than 2.4 million CNCs and 250,000 industrial robots installed worldwide. FANUC employs 6500 people in all corners of the globe. One third of the staff at the headquarters in Japan are young and innovative engineers in research and development.
There is hardly a product in people’s daily lives that FANUC have not somehow helped to produce. FANUC control and drive systems are integrated in machines that manufacture components; these parts, in turn, are used in everyday products. 

 GOM ATOS is an optical 3D surface measurement system, for the first time ever combined with a tactile coordinate measuring touch probe.
Many complex measurement tasks require a combination of surface and tactile 3D measurement. The newly introduced measuring touch probe is available as an accessory for the ATOS 3D Digitizer. Optical surface and touch probe measurements are carried out within one system and are also analyzed in one software package. It is therefore easy to switch between surface and tactile measurements and the respective analysis.