Advanced Ceramics and Composites Expo

Tim Jones, MRF’s Business Development Manager, represented us at the International Conference on Advanced Ceramics and Composites (ICACC-17), which was held in Daytona Beach, Florida, January 22-27, 2017.

The international conference brings together scientists, researchers, industry leaders and manufacturers of advanced structural and functional ceramics, composites and emerging materials and technologies.  The conference focused on fifteen Symposia, such as photonics and energy, bio-ceramics and bio-composites, materials for sustainable nuclear fission, and additive manufacturing .  In addition to the Symposia presentations, there were evening sessions where equipment manufacturers met with attendees and the presenters talked one-on-one with attendees about their subject matters.  Information and technologies were exchanged freely in a collaborative atmosphere.

The list of attendees supplied by ACS shows the 952 attendees and presenters were truly international.  While the US had the largest attendance, other top countries were  Japan,  Germany,  France, Canada and China. China’s may have been underrepresented, since the conference dates coincided with the Chinese New Year holiday, when a major part of the population travels to and returns from hometowns.

Manufacturing companies represent only 21% of attendees, partly because funding of ceramic research by US manufacturers is curtailed and also because any research findings are not generally shared in a collaborative fashion. USA attendees consisted mostly of universities, manufacturers and government labs.

The next ceramic conference is the ACS Ceramic Expo in Cleveland from April 25 – 27th. This conference is sponsored by the Manufacturing Division of the ACS and will have 270 manufacturers and 3500 attendees.  This is the largest ACS conference of the year and MRF will be present at this event.  MRF has been serving the Ceramics Community for over 26 years with its expertise in custom high temperature furnaces for specific applications and processes.