According to a perspective study for the German mechanical and plant engineering industry in the field of high-strength components for fiber composites, process costs can be reduced by around 40% by 2020. This was the conclusion reached by the VDMA Composite Technology Forum and Roland Berger Consultants GmbH. According to the study, process costs can fall twice as fast as fiber costs in this decade: Overall, a reduction in component costs of around 30 percent can be expected. This development is particularly interesting for carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP): in addition to the aviation industry, the automotive industry is also increasingly using CFRP components and is trying to establish them in series production.
 
The "Carbon Composites 2012" conference on November 22 in Augsburg will focus on the trend topic of automation. The event is being organized by the trade journal "MM Maschinenmarkt" in cooperation with the Carbon Composites e.V. competence network. The conference will discuss the opportunities and challenges of the new materials and show how industrial process chains for CFRP components can be implemented. The focus will be on presentations by experienced speakers on the process chain in the production and processing of carbon fiber-reinforced plastics. Experts from science and industry will present the individual processes involved in the design and manufacture of CFRP series parts in detail: from component engineering to shaping, processing and testing, right through to assembly, including automation. The "Carbon Composites 2012 Symposium" is aimed at production planners, production managers, quality managers, design managers, managing directors and commercial decision-makers. The topics are just as interesting for the automotive and aviation industries as they are for equipment and raw material suppliers or manufacturers and suppliers of CFRP components.

The "Symposium Carbon Composites 2012" will take place on
22.11.2012 at the Congress Center, Augsburg

Further information and registration at www.fachtagung-carboncomposites.de

MM MaschinenMarkt is published with a circulation of 41,100 copies. The industry magazine offers business news, industry news, management topics and practical technical information for decision-makers in management, production, automation and design in the manufacturing industry. MM is published internationally in Switzerland, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, Thailand, Korea and China with a total annual circulation of over 6 million copies. The specialist portal www.maschinenmarkt.de is aimed primarily at managers and specialists in core sectors of the manufacturing industry in seven topic channels. The parent company Vogel Business Media is one of the leading German providers of specialist information with over 100 trade journals, over 100 web portals, over 100 business events as well as numerous mobile offerings and international activities. The company is headquartered in Würzburg.