French Milled Soap

SAMPE 2011 Long Beach Product Showcase

The annual Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering’s (SAMPE) Convention & Exhibition returned, for the first time since 2008, to its long-time base in Long Beach, Calif., after a first-ever Pacific Northwest showing last year in Seattle, Wash. The four-day event, held May 23-26 at the Long Beach Convention Center, met with considerable success. The SAMPE 2011 exhibit hall was sold out this year, with 356 exhibitors (including 106 first-time exhibitors) representing 555 companies. Attendance figures indicated the show took a large leap; the official count topped 7,100, with delegates coming from 48 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and 27 other countries.

Organized by SAMPE’s Orange County Chapter, the SAMPE conference was cochaired by Joyce Lentz, president of National Aerospace Supply Co. (San Juan Capistrano, Calif.), and Darrell Reed, quality control engineer at OCM Test Labs (Anaheim, Calif.). Eight tutorials and more than 250 technical papers were presented by M&P practitioners and researchers.

"SAMPE is on an upward trend," commented Dr. Allan Crasto, associate director at UDRI (Dayton, Ohio) and sitting SAMPE international president. "We seem to have fully recovered from the impact of the recession.” On Tuesday, conference delegates attended a keynote presentation on “Understanding and Managing Risk in Human Space Flight Developments and Operations” by Dr. Mike Ryschkewitsch, chief engineer at NASA. He discussed NASA’s approach to certification of systems for human spaceflight.

Wednesday’s keynoter, Andreas Wüllner, managing director of SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers GmbH (Munich, Germany), filled in the background on the events that led to the much-publicized decision by the SGL/BMW joint venture to build its now nearly complete captive carbon fiber production plant in Moses Lake, Wash. Wüllner reported that the carbon fiber manufacturing facility is complete and that testing of the first production line will begin this summer, followed by the plant’s official opening sometime in third quarter 2011. In his presentation, “SGL Carbon Group – BMW: A Visionary Joint Venture for Carbon Fiber Composites in Automotive Applications,” he updated the audience on the development of the BMW all-electric i3 and hybrid electric i8 vehicles, both of which make use of resin transfer molded SGL carbon fiber composites in the passenger cell, called the Life Module. During the Q&A after his address, Wüllner was asked about repair of carbon fiber composites on the two car models in the event of damage. Wüllner said that BMW is establishing dedicated global repair facilities designed specifically to repair damaged composite structures. He would not say, however, whether body panels (hood, roof, door panels, etc.) on the i3 and i8 would be made of composites.

in praise of soap…. « eclectic revisited by Maureen Bower

Maureen, I heard on CNN the story of the man & the hotel soaps. I praise him, bigtime. And, you for reporting on this. Such a simple simple idea, taking all the left over bars and donating them to this lovely man so he can send them to his home country in Africa where children have never seen soap in their lives. And, 3 cheers for Marriott Corp. for their participation. Look where the world would be if we all shared inspiration like this? And, you mother’s soaps are making me want some of them…does she sell?

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