North American User Meeting 2017
On September 13-15, 2017 the MAGMASOFT® user community in North America met at the Eaglewood Resort and Spa in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. An enthusiastic group of 94 users brought together great experience, interesting case studies and a unique opportunity for the sharing of ideas and camaraderie.
This year began with Steve Sikorski addressing the assembly for the first time as the new President of MAGMA Foundry Technologies, Inc. Steve shared with the group an overview of how the company’s staff is arranged into focus groups that specialize in different alloys, processes, and tasks such as support and training. We had a great opportunity to have the CEO & President of MAGMA GmbH, Dr. Marc Schneider attend the meeting. Dr. Schneider provided insight on the development process at MAGMA and presented a synopsis of ongoing research and development activities across a variety of different disciplines.
As the day progressed, the meeting divided into small groups dedicated to a process/alloy, which enable focused discussion regarding each user’s processes and alloy types. Customers presented their current projects and had the opportunity to discuss techniques and challenges. MAGMA staff were present to spark discussions where needed, and to reinforce the use of the MAGMA APPROACH. This methodical and stepwise path through a project helps to keep users focused on the task at hand, and realize the power of effective communication of optimization findings. In these breakout sessions, a theme emerged: parametric geometry components providing a fast and highly effective way for engineers to identify the optimum design of gating and rigging systems. Additionally, each of the groups discussed the next software release: MAGMASOFT® 5.4 autonomous engineering. Users were introduced to some of the enhanced functionality and new features of this software version.
Day two of the meeting ushered in our latest class of MAGMA Certified User recipients. John Anderson of Badger Alloys Inc., Bing Fung of Chrysler Corporation, Scott Meadows of BorgWarner, and Ryan Rankin of Betz Industries have all achieved this elite user status. Kudos to these engineers as they join a group of only 33 other recipients thus far. The general session concluded with an interesting presentation from a long time software user, Dan Hoefert of Eck Industries, Inc. Dan shared his efforts in building a successful research collaboration between foundries, universities and professional societies to look at the formation of oxide inclusions in cast aluminum. He shared how MAGMASOFT® was a critical tool in project conception, communication, and ultimately, how it helped to promote an idea into a funded and well defined research project.
We are pleased to announce that the next North American User Group Meeting will take place on September 12-14, 2018 at the Eaglewood Resort and Spa. The MAGMA Inc. staff looks forward to welcoming the entire user community next fall, and offers big thanks to all who attended this year.
