CAMX 2015 Preview

For many years, the North American composites community has been ably served by two major trade organizations: the American Composites Manufacturers Assn. (ACMA, Arlington, VA, US) and the Society for the Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering (SAMPE, Covina, Calif.). Each served a different segment of the market — ACMA covered what is often called “industrial” composites while SAMPE focused on “advanced” composites. In 2014, the debut of the Composites and Advanced Materials Expo (CAMX 2014) at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL, US, a joint ACMA/SAMPE undertaking, brought those previously separately served communities together in a new North American conference and trade show. 

In the light of hindsight, it’s clear that CAMX 2014 very successfully united these increasingly complementary technological streams in a educational and marketing/networking event that, by all accounts, is setting the trend for the industry’s future on this side of the Atlantic. For year two, CAMX organizers are — no surprise — building on that success.

 

What you will find

CAMX 2015 will feature four full days of conference sessions (Oct. 26-29) united under the fitting thematic banner “Combined Strength. Unsurpassed Innovation.” The conference sessions, again, will combine the best of what ACMA and SAMPE once offered separately, in a variety of educational options — technical paper presentations, education sessions, panel discussions and tutorials. The conference activities will run concurrently with a three-day exhibition (Oct. 27-29).

Given the great debate about the place of composites in the future of volume automotive production, the keynote address (Oct. 27 at 9:00 a.m.) by Dr. Gary Smyth, executive director of Global Research and Development at General Motors (Detroit, MI, US), should be a popular attraction. Smyth’s insights into the future of autocomposites will include lessons learned from use of composites on GM’s Chevy Corvette as well as a high-level perspective on transformational change now going on in the automotive industry. (CW editor-in-chief Jeff Sloan caught up with Dr. Smyth for a pre-show interview and shares some intriguing advance observations in his “From the Editor” column. See "Material selection for automotive is a meritocracy" under "Editor's Picks" at top right.)

For conference info, pricing and registration procedures, visit the CAMX Web site | www.thecamx.org

 

On the show floor

The CAMX 2015 show floor, at CW press time, was almost entirely reserved. A number of exhibitors informed CW of their intentions in terms of the products and services they'll present on the show floor and, for some, the technologies they'll discuss during CAMX conference presentations. For information on all of them, see the items prefaced by "CAMX 205 preview:" here.