The two-day forum, to be held in Milan on 5 and 6 June, is dedicated to the design and production of components and products made of engineering plastics or composite materials, as replacements for aluminium and metal alloys.

Erico Spini
, marketing & application development director of the RadiciGroup Plastics Business Area, is going to be among the speakers at the event. The conference is organized by PlastDesign and Plast, two of the most prestigious trade magazines in the plastics industry, and is going to address some of the major themes in metal replacement. Performance and flexibility in engineering polymer and composites formulation, cost analysis of plastics vs. metals, design and simulation software, high performance prototypes, processing technologies and process automation are just some of the topics to be discussed at the conference. For RadiciGroup, Mr. Spini is giving a presentation entitled Replacement examples for metal parts with polyamides “designed to specification”.

“At this forum,” Mr. Spini said, “we decided to focus our attention on two specific technical aspects: the criteria for material selection through functional and environmental impact analysis, and the advancement of polymer characterization and design. We are going to bring examples of the replacement of certain metals with special polyamides designed to specification. Metal replacement is a theme of extreme importance for many of our target sectors, from automotive to electrical/electronics and household appliances. These are the fields for which we have been developing a wide range of nylon engineering plastics with enhanced mechanical properties, ideal for use as metal replacements.”