EDITORIAL
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Alessia Venturi Editor-in-chief Direttore Responsabile
ince its founding, ipcm® has considered architects, designers and specifiers to be among its main target readers. First of all, like the automotive and fashion industries, architecture “produces” dreams and emotions. Secondly, it is a medium of cultural and historical memory: the daring buildings that are rising around us and the increasingly complex and high skyscrapers that now defy the laws of physics will be the legacy of our presence on Earth. Contemporary architecture is more and more frequently tied to aluminium, which is no longer the “material of the future” but a present choice thanks to its exceptional workability and to its lightness and strength characteristics that make it practically eternal. In the last few decades, aluminium has taken design and architecture to a higher level. Like every year, we dedicate our March issue precisely to the fields of aluminium and its finishing, offering an industrial and technological perspective that reveals what is hidden behind the buildings that surround us. These pages are very rich in content and inspiration not only for the experts, but also for all those who need to be constantly updated on the new technical and aesthetic possibilities offered by this material, such as designers and specifiers. We have gone through almost all Europe to collect a series of case studies about highly innovative companies that offer contracting aluminium extrusion, transformation or coating services and that during the last year have stood out for having introduced advanced technologies. They all have done so to improve their finishing processes, with the ultimate goal of meeting the ever more complex demands of the market effectively and efficiently. This trip has taught us that aluminium is gaining momentum also in very different industries from architecture and transportation, sectors requiring increasingly complex profiles and more and more resistant surface treatments. We have also found out that the subject of Industry 4.0 is emerging in the aluminium coating field, in which several Italian plant engineering companies stand out as great innovators and market leaders. Smart vision systems, sensors interfaced with each other, and machines that are interconnected and managed by central “brains” cease to be mere ideas on paper and enter the industrial test phase. Unfortunately, we have also learned that the replacement of chromating processes with eco-friendly chrome-free cycles has not been completed, yet. This issue will be published just before some important events for the aluminium and aluminium finishing industries to be held in the coming months. On the one hand, Aluminium Middle East will take place on May 15 to 17 in Dubai as a spinoff of Aluminium, the most important exhibition in the world for the aluminium industry held in Düsseldorf, for the Middle East markets. On the other hand, Aluminium Two Thousand will be held in Verona on June 20 to 24 within Metef; every two years, this international conference catalyses the world’s attention on the aluminium extrusion, manufacturing and finishing processes. Finally, let us not forget the Milan Design Week that begins on April 4, where aluminium will play a key role in the design and furniture worlds. Ipcm is the media partner of the first two events and will be present at all three of them with this issue full of innovative ideas.
international PAINT&COATING magazine - MARCH/APRIL 2017 - N. 44
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