For P.E. Schall GmbH & Co. KG, a private trade fair organiser based in Germany, who has, for many years, been working with the Friedrichshafen Exhibition Centre, the venue for the annually held international show for the plastics processing, Fakuma, the record-breaking figures achieved in the 2014 edition also represent a duty to further develop the said show while maintaining its current high levels. Fakuma project manager Annemarie Lipp has already announced that all available floor space at the Friedrichshafen venue will be taken up and fully allocated. Consequently, Fakuma 2015, which will be held 15 -17 October, will literally tread in the footsteps of last year’s trade fair and promises a world-class industry event at its 24th edition, she said.

Event promoter Paul E. Schall said that it is imperative for standards to be maintained, “because the competition in the trade fair business is splitting up both internationally and at the technical level, and only a few leading trade fairs remain with genuine global acceptance, for example Fakuma.

Manufacturers and distributors of machines, tooling, material flow technology and peripheral equipment in all areas of industrial plastics processing are faced with similarly large challenges. Above all the hype which is demonstrating nearly hysterical traits regarding the complex issue of generative production should be stressed within this context, which has gotten entirely out of control during the last two years and is finally beginning to settle down now that its industrial usefulness is being closely scrutinised. In the interest of the exhibitors and expert visitors, we as promoters provide for objectivisation – especially in light of the fact that we’ve been active in the fields of additive, generative and prototyping processes for more than 25 years by creating a platform at a very early stage for exhibitors from research and industry, in order to familiarise the expert visitors with the latest, most highly promising technologies and processes.”

More new processes and exhibitors are expected to grace the upcoming Fakuma. According to the show’s press release: New processes are being added to the already more or less well-known ones, which are not used for the production of plastic parts but rather, for example, to construct injection moulds made of layered, powdered metal in tooling quality with cooling system structures which are extremely close to the contour. Here, Fakuma has been one step ahead and presented MPA technology with combined metal deposition and 5-axis milling processes within the framework of its enormous “tooling systems” exhibition segment last year. The most up-to-date technologies and applied innovative processes – these were met with great interest by nearly 1800 expert visitors from 36 countries (nearly 600 from outside of Germany) and nearly 46,000 expert visitors from 117 countries around the world in 2014.