PIMAP Plus consortium has participated, from 16 to 18 May 2022, to AISTECH 2022 in Pittsburgh (USA), the main exhibition dedicated to the iron and steel. AISTech is the premier annual technology event of the steel industry with practically global coverage. Despite the still ongoing Corona pandemic and international conflicts with limitations for certain countries, the event gathered record participation.
Hosted by the Swedish cluster Sustainable Steel Region, PIMAP Plus was present in their booth at the exhibition together with three SME’s active in the steel value chain and focused on efficient green and sustainable steel production.
Participating SMEs were very satisfied with the arrangements and got higher than expected attention by visitors at the booth, as well as a number of new leads. Indeed, photonics represents a base for many new and improved solutions for the steel industry to meet current challenges and help forward the on-going transition to more energy efficient, environmentally friendly and digitalised steel production globally. Something that was clearly visible during the conference and in many exhibitors displays.
Visits to other photonics connected exhibitors revealed a good faith in future business opportunities, also in the light of the new project PIMAP4Sustainability, while within certain already established technologies, the competition is also quite hard (e.g., optical microscopy, position sensors, dimensional gauges). More advanced, robust and accurate sensors and instrumentation are demanded from the industry to make existing and new processes better monitored, controlled and optimized.