Editorial

 Slovenians are seen in the eyes of foreigners as hard-working and diligent workers. Companies that dispose with a strong developmental activity are very respected. Even more if the company in question is a toolshop. The Kavčič toolshop, which grew years ago into company Precisium, is one fine example of a company that learns and grows from its mistakes, making sure not to repeat them. 44 years of experience brings great weight in the world of modern toolmaking, especially if the company is dealing with tools and dies, the precision of which is measured in thousandths of millimetre.
Ludvik Kavčič chose the path of entrepreneurship in 1968, when he established a small craft business, which soon grew into a company. The Kavčič toolshop, years ago transformed into company Precisium, has remained faithful for 44 years to its core activity of manufacturing control gauges. In time, their offer of products and services has naturally increased substantially.   

 The Science and Technology Committee has organised the 9. Nanotechnology Day, which took place on November 2 at Ljubljana Exhibition and Convention Centre and was attended by 272 participants. It was also the 80. professional event organised by the Science and Technology Committee at the Chamber of Craft and Small Business of Slovenia. For the first time, all three Slovenian universities participated at the event: the University of Maribor, the University of Ljubljana and the University of Nova Gorica, joined by the Jožef Stefan institute and the National Institute of Chemistry from Ljubljana.
The guests at the event were the Minister for Education, Science, Culture and Sport dr. Žiga Turk, the director of the National Institute of Chemistry prof. dr. Janko Jamnik, president of the Expert council for science and technology of RS prof. dr. Marko Jaklič, director of the Ljubljana Exhibition and Convention Centre Iztok Bricl, president of the Chamber of Craft and Small Business of Slovenia Alojz Kovšca, and many others.   

 Automation and robotization of manufacturing in LTH Castings has advanced considerably during the last years, accompanied by the accumulation of internal knowledge in this field. Based on a present demand, we have started in-house development to introduce automation and robotization into the manufacturing. The article presents some in-house robotization projects and details the implementation of a robotized handling and manipulation cell for an existing machine tool.
During the last years, the automation and robotization in LTH Castings has reached a level that demands staff trained in the field of automation and robotics. As the existing personnel had some experience and knowledge, we had decided for internal training, and a part of the staff was trained by the providers of elements and systems for automation.   

 Beckhoff expanded its product palette for building automation with the BC9191 room controller, closing the gap in the offer of room controllers, where prices is often one of the decisive factors. BC9191 is intended for building automation and will be suitable mainly for office buildings and hotels. BC9191 disposes with all the usual functions necessary to control a single room. In addition to the integrated inputs and outputs, the controller is expandable through the internal K-bus. The customer can select among the 400 different input/output modules offered by Beckhoff. 

 The doors to the traditional 22. FAKUMA fair have closed on Saturday the 20th of October. The Europe's largest plastics processing fair, which attracted 1700 exhibitors from 35 countries this year, took place from October 16 to 20 at the Friedrichshafen fairgrounds. Traditionally, it once again combined injection moulding technology, extrusion technology and thermoforming technology with all the necessary peripheral equipment and materials.
The visitors were presented with everything necessary for a modern manufacturing process, from materials and additives to injection moulding, extrusion and thermoforming machines, drying and dosing equipment, manipulators, mills… The fair continued the tradition of the last years under the motto »Be efficient«, which was grasped by all the exhibitors. All fields of hardware focused on reducing the energy consumption and achieving the production efficiency. Electric drives, insulated heaters, optimized software, manipulators, robots, complex processing cells and other details clearly presented the trends in this industry branch. Matjaž Rot 

 New unreinforced Grivory HT3 polyamides are used in applications where other polyamides reach their limits. One such application are steering column bearing housing sleeves for BMW series 5 and 7, which are exposed to radiation heat from the engine and must withstand temperatures up to 130 °C. In this application, the focus is not only stiffness and strength, but also on slip behaviour and impact strength. BMW decided on use of Grivory HT3Z LF which contains a certain amount of polytetrafluorethylene. This makes the material excellently suited for the manufacture of technical components, especially those which are exposed to tribological loading. 

 The Metrology Institute of the Republic of Slovenia is a body under the Ministry of economic development and technology. In accordance with the Metrology Act and the Precious Metal Products Act, it takes care on the national level for the precision of measurements and for the traceability/international comparability of measurement results, and in this relation also for the proper use of measurement units. We spoke to head of the Amount of substance measurement division dr. Irena Grabec Švegl about the work in the division. Vesna Vilčnik 

 Complex decision-making processes must be designed so they can adapt to new information, while intelligent software solutions must enable both improved decision making and forecasting, and the optimisation of resource usage. The key is in the collective intelligence – a technology for streaming useful information from large quantities of data.
Automated systems will soon be producing more data than all (human) users together. Managing and using the flood of bits and bytes remains a great challenge. By combining sensors in some sort of a collective intelligence it will be possible to obtain useful knowledge from many unrelated pieces of data in the fields such as medicine, production planning or system building.   

 Mid-November, Microsoft has organised in Ljubljana the Slovenian presentation of the new Windows 8 operating system and innovative personal computers and tablets, which are already present or will soon be present in the Slovenian market. With the Windows 8 and Windows RT systems as new members of the Windows family, the home and business users are offered a rich palette of the best personal computers to date.
The users can select among the new high-performance desktop computers, some of them equipped with touch screens, very thin and lightweight laptops, flexible hybrid tablets combining the advantages of laptops and tablets in a single device, and for the firsts time the tablets with the Windows RT operating systems, run by the energy efficient ARM processors. Microsoft's partners Acer, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba displayed their new models at the event in Ljubljana. 

 Turning cast iron is subject to different characteristics and applications, requiring different machining strategies to fulfil the quality, cost-efficiency and productivity demands.
Cast iron is used for many different products, from large pumps in relatively short manufacturing cycles to mass-manufactured products such as brake discs. A wide palette of components and tool applications, combined with a large set of material properties for different cast steel types, presents challenges with respect to achieving productivity and quality. A comprehensive understanding of all factors is the foundation for finding the best approach to operation, milling strategies, tools and milling data.   

 In Howe and Howe Technologies, every day is special. As a matter of fact, this is a demand. The manufacturers from Maine, USA, are often seen on the Discovery Channel, developing extreme vehicles with incredible properties. About 60 % of work is done for the military, 40 % for the private customers, and 100 % of their work deserves respects.
Michael and Geoffrey Howe are twins who have always been very inventive. They have established Howe and Howe Technologies in 2001, and every day they work as if there are no limits. For every creation, they have set three conditions: what they make has never been done before, it is cost-efficient and serves a good purpose. They often make vehicles used to save people from dangerous situation such as fires and enabling a fast response to save lives. Hans-Georg Schätzl